


The City in the Sky

by Nomanono



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Almost Angels, Clouds, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy Creatures, Incompetent But Earnest, M/M, NaNoWriMo, Rainbows, Sky Prince, Soft Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-08-17 05:09:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 50,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16509932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomanono/pseuds/Nomanono
Summary: The Sky Prince lives with his head in the clouds, ruling over his court of colors and managing the world's weather. His boredom always gets him into trouble, especially when an intriguing dream sends him to the surface to find the most surprising person he's ever seen.





	1. Crystals & Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all, this is a NaNoWriMo work. What does that mean!?
> 
> 1\. This is not going to be my best shit. NaNoWriMo is about speed, not quality. If you're into soft fantasy and want a good read, check out [The Cozy Cloud](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12364956) instead.
> 
> 2\. Frequent updates! And finished within the month!
> 
> 3\. Consistency is a wash! I'm kinda going into this blind, so~ we're all on this ride together ;)
> 
> If you still wanna read after all those warnings, by golly, let's do it.

For Guang Hong Ji, the entire world was soft, white and suffused with light. He was scouting through cottony tunnels within an enormous cloud, hunting for crystals. Far above him was the city in the sky, perched atop its archipelago of puffy cumulus that followed the shifting winds around the world. On the surface were blue skies and sunshine, but for Guang Hong it was just nooks and cloudy hollows as he skipped through miles and miles of ever-twisting tunnel. He wore night-tint glasses that turned his eyes owlish and overlarge but protected from the sunlight that, even so far within the cloud, could make the tunnels glow white hot. Guang Hong’s fingertips drifted through the misty tunnel walls, like dragging along the surface of a lake. As plush as they were, the clouds could at least hold his weight — but then, how much did an angel really weigh?

That was what the people below called him, anyway, down far beneath the floating city in little villages and patches of civilization spread across the plains and mountain hills and tropical islands. Angels was an easier word than seraphim or skyling or what they usually called themselves: citizens of the sky. 

A spark of light flashed within the cloud walls, and Guang Hong stopped in his tracks, pressing his hand into the cloud and sifting his fingers towards the glimmer. 

There. 

Something cool and hard connected with his fingertips. Guang Hong pulled it free and lifted his glasses to inspect it. The crystal rhomboid sat comfortably in the depression of his palm, its body perfectly clear, no hint of fog or scratch or the pesky clusters of glitter-ice that sometimes clamped to the sides. Guang Hong tucked the crystal into the pouch at his belt, along with several others from the day, and continued on his way. 

The only way to tell time in the tunnels was the tint of the clouds. Bright white came within four hours of noon, and the two hours to either side were cream to egg yolk gold. Normally, Guang Hong used that time to survey the day’s catch. After all, yellow clouds yielded yellow crystals, and those were so very much more difficult to work with. White clouds, clear crystals? Those crystals could become anything. 

Provided Guang Hong made it back to the surface in time. 

Guang Hong sat cross-legged in an alcove of the cloud and dumped his pouch out onto a velvety black cloth. The crystals were so clear they nearly disappeared. Most were small: the size of his thumbnail, diamond-esque in shape, though some were squatter, or thin and hexagonal. Guang Hong divided the crystals into pairs by shape and size, finding the perfect match for each one, but the rhomboid crystal kept begging for attention. It didn’t have a pair. Not that Guang Hong had found, at least. 

As the tunnels around him turned peach with the promise of sunset, Guang Hong leapt to his feet. How had it gotten so late!? The crystals went back in his pouch, tucked into pockets two by two. Tonight was a blue moon, a chance to capture a shade of indigo that only came once a year, and that’s if they were lucky. 

There wasn’t time to run back through the tunnels. 

Guang Hong looked left and right, as if expecting some savior to appear out of the rapidly darkening clouds. 

There wasn’t time. 

Taking a deep breath, Guang Hong leapt into the wall, finding himself surrounded by the misty embrace of suspended moisture. His tiny wings fluttered on his back, and he swam — flew? — as best he could through the thick fluff. He burst through the floor of another tunnel, took another breath, and leapt up into the ceiling. The clouds were lightening — he was getting closer — closer — 

“There you are!” 

Guang Hong’s head popped up through the surface of the clouds, revealing the bemused, smiling face of his partner, Laeo. Laeo pulled him up and gestured to the sunset sky and the rising moon, enormous, on the horizon. The pair lived in a cottage on a high cloud, its roof shingled with pearly scales from the giant koi in the castle’s lake, its cloudstone walls the pink of coastal sunrise. Behind them stood the city, and the castle, but looking ahead? Only the sunset horizon and the distant impression of another world, miles below. 

“Today was a good day,” Guang Hong said, pouring out his pouch onto their workbench. Dozens of translucent threads, like spider’s silk, hung from a woodwind beam, and Guang Hong attached the crystal pairs beside each other on the threads, one by one, until it looked like a harp’s strings, beaded with crystalline dew. “I found something very special.” He withdrew the rhomboid last, holding it like a secret, and noticed that Laeo had his hands behind his back as well. They both smiled, knowing in an instant what the other held, but they pretended, for the fun of it.

“On three?” Laeo asked.

Guang Hong nodded. His freckles were made of crystal, too, and glittered in the fiery red light as the sun disappeared. 

On three, they opened their palms, revealing matching rhomboid crystals: clear and flawless, edges completely unchipped. Of course, a perfect pair would find a perfect pair. The two touched their foreheads together with a giggle, noses brushing back and forth, and then it was time. 

As the sun disappeared and the moon rose, the sky turned a purple so bright it was nearly ultraviolet. Laeo and Guang Hong looked at each other, and at the same instance reached down and kissed their crystals. Sky crystals, so sensitive to love, were activated by the soulmates, seeking their kissed partner. The crystals absorbed the light of the sky, becoming that unreal indigo, and then a band of that same light appeared between them, a dancing ribbon conjoining the crystals forever. 

“It’s beautiful,” Guang Hong sighed. No matter how many times they brought a pair of crystals to life, it always made his heart flutter.

“You’re beautiful,” Laeo whispered.

The indigo ribbon vibrated with their shared giggle. Pair by pair, Laeo and Guang Hong used their kisses to capture blue moon light, until the harp threads looked more like woven cloth, indigo intersecting with silver webbing. When all the crystals had been activated, the sky was raven black and glittering with stars, the moon a silver disc. The light from the crystals retained its purplish core, casting violet onto Guang Hong’s glittery freckles and Laeo’s sparkling eyes. Laeo stood shoulder to shoulder with Guang Hong as they watched the moon rise, each holding a rhomboid, connected by the thread of light. 

“Do you think it’s good enough for him?” Guang Hong asked. 

Laeo’s wings fluttered behind him. He didn’t have freckles across his nose and cheeks, but his eyes had crystalline flecks within that shone so brightly he often took to squinting, and when he was happiest you could hardly see his eyes at all. 

Guang Hong adored that look most of all. “I think the Sky Prince will love it.” 

—

High above the rest of the world is a city in the sky. The city floats on a series of fluffy clouds, connected by rainbow bridges and criss-crossed by sparkling rivers and misty waterfalls. Its citizens live in brightly colored cottages, closely-cluttered around the central castle and dispersing to nearly nothing along the fringes. In the castle lives the Sky Prince, child of the Sun and Moon, charged with ensuring the skies of the world serve the people below. 

Sometimes, that means cloudless days and sustained sunshine for the fields below, and sometimes it means monsoons and terrifying storms to renew the landscape. One day could bring a gentle breeze, just overcast enough to keep the sweat away, and the next a first snow, signaling winter’s start.

But the skies are filled with more than weather and warmth. 

When the people below hope and dream, they look upward, and so their dreams float upward, too. 

— 

Phichit lived in a quaint hexagonal hut attached to the castle by a long hallway, a minty-green jetty of cloudstone laced with matching crystals. At night, the crystals created a glowing web, strung back and forth just below the ceiling. Every day, Phichit had to walk that long hallway. Twice. It would have been far easier to do his job if Phichit lived in the castle proper.

…but the Sky Prince was allergic to his pets. 

Phichit’s job was by no means the most difficult of occupations in the sky, but it was certainly trying, and the presence of a dozen pocket-sized sprites in his life kept his spirits high in a sometimes demoralizing day-to-day. No bigger than his palm, the sprites came in all colors of the rainbow, little balls of fur with tiny paws and translucent mousey ears. 

Of course, the Sky Prince’s allergy didn’t prevent Phichit from sneaking one of the small sprites in his pocket to the Dreamery. As Dreamkeeper, it was Phichit’s job to monitor the hopes and dreams of the world below as they drifted up to the city. From all over the world, the dreams found their way through the clouds and into the Dreamery — which was a nicer, if less accurate name than ‘horizonless castle basement filled with bubbles’. At the very least, the ceiling was a mosaic of woven crystals, so it was a far nicer basement than most.

As Phichit walked slowly through the vast space, each new dream emerged from the plush cloud ground as an iridescent bubble. Most were large enough to span Phichit’s chest, and within the sheen tiny worlds played out. 

Most were mundane. Teeth falling out. Waking up to the first snow without having harvested the fields. Running late to church or temple, school or work. Some were optimistic: dreams of flying, of racing down open roads, of riding a swift steed into the sunset. Some made Phichit blush and look away.

Some were nightmares: the bubbles nearly black, surfaces like oil slicks. Usually when Phichit found nightmares, he used a thin needle made of sungold to pop them, waking the human below. He kept track of who dreamt what, and when nightmares recurred again and again, Phicht called upon an Emissary. 

Phichit paused at one such bubble, midnight black. Through the murk, Phichit saw racing footsteps, oversized hands grabbing and reaching and touching, the gleam of a knife. Screaming. Screaming. 

It was the third time in as many days. 

Instead of gold, Phichit used a moonsilver hoop to catch the bubble, carrying it through the expansive underbelly of the castle to the Emissary’s alcove. The Emissary wore a simple white cloth, lashed at his hips by golden cord, his eyes closed in meditation. Or, that’s what Toph always claimed. Phichit was certain he fell asleep from time to time.

“Yes?” Toph asked, his eyes flicking open before Phichit could say a word. Most citizens in the sky had wings of some sort, but as Emissary, Toph’s stretched magnificently from his back, feathers as bright as noon clouds, and a baritone voice like bellowing brass to match their grandeur. Toph could barely unfold his wings in the close-ceilinged basement, but that wouldn’t be an issue in the dream. 

“Nightmare,” Phichit said, as if it wasn’t obvious.

Phichit transferred the black bubble to a moonsilver stand over a basin of sleep draught. When the bubble touched it, it soaked up an extra coating, thickening the walls of the bubble so it wouldn’t pop while the Emissary was inside. 

You never wanted to be inside a bubble when it popped.

Toph stood, having surveyed the nightmare, and with a nod to Phichit leaned forward, pressing his face against the iridescent orb. It deformed against his skin, and then all at once, in a tangle of Toph-colored light, he disappeared. 

Phichit’s sprite popped its head out of an iridescent pocket, the Dreamkeeper’s robes mimicking the dream bubbles themselves. Phichit stroked its fur absently, its eyes like two black beads, blinking in the direction of the dream. 

“He’ll be fine,” Phichit said. “Don’t worry.”

In the dream, a bronzed hand grabbed the wrist of those reaching, weapon-wielding limbs. 

“Halt!” came an echo of an echo of Toph’s powerful voice. The running stopped, and the knife dropped as two vast wings filled the dream space. The captor fled. “Come here.” Toph extended a hand towards the dreamer, towards their mind’s eye, and she came forward, trusting. Phichit could only discern little bits of what Toph was saying, the reassurance of his presence far more important than the words themselves. But he ended the same way as he always did: “You have the sky’s eye on you. You are stronger than you know.”

The dream shifted, the knife and the captor all falling into infinity, never to be seen again, and in their place was a green meadow and a smiling woman’s face. The dream’s tone shifted from terror, panic, and flight to sturdiness, calm, and the strength of being loved. 

“There,” Phichit said, patting the sprite’s head. “See?”

With a flicker, Toph re-appeared beside the bubble, his wings dripping iridescent residue. Phichit handed over his sungold needle, letting Toph do the honors on this one. Instead, Toph shook his head, going back to his mat and grabbing a silk kerchief to preen his wings clean. 

“Let her enjoy the dream for awhile,” Toph insisted. “She could use it.” 

It wasn’t their normal procedure. Phichit didn’t want to risk the dream going sour again and ruining Toph’s intervention. But he wasn’t about to question an Emissary. And it seemed stable enough. Nature and nurture. 

“Next time he comes down here, he’s going to have a sneezing fit,” Toph said, eyes closing again in meditation. Phichit gave a snort, rubbing the head of his sprite as it peaked out, as if sensing it was the topic of discussion. 

“Maybe. But to do that,” Phichit pointed out, “he’d have to actually come down here.”


	2. Metal & Mounts

For most citizens in the sky, life was a timeless collage of color and cheer, utopian and grand. 

And then there was Yuri. 

Yuri’s boot crashed against the ground, turning the patch of cloud deep gray as flashes of static crackled under his heel. He paced back and forth outside the pasture, looking over the edge of the city’s rainbow-linked clouds (ugh) to the dark thunderhead near the horizon. He could see the lightning flash through the cloud, illuminating brain-like masses of water-laden moisture. Yuri should have been there. He was a Bolt, dammit. It was his job to shepherd the storms and stir up monsoons and even swirl the world’s clouds in to hurricanes. 

Was his job, or it would be, as soon as he found a steed.

Most Bolts synched with a steed before they even hit puberty. Hell, there were stories of Bolts who could barely _walk_ coming home with a colt or filly tagging along behind them. But year after year, typhoon season came, and Yuri went to the pastures, and no one from the flock even glanced at him. 

He’d done everything he was supposed to. He had cakes of oat and ions in his pocket, a bridle he’d painstakingly made out of moonsilver and inked leather. He’d spent the better part of a year at the Mirror Forge, working with the mastersmith to ensure the tack was worthy of the midnight black steeds that carried the Bolts through the storms. 

The next strike of lightning shook the castle itself with its thunder, even from such a distance. The team — the team Yuri should have been on — was creating the storm of the season. Yuri could feel the tension in the air, the zing foreshadowing a lightning strike. He looked at the darkness, but every black blur he saw already had an armored rider, wielding metallic moonsilver platemail and summoning the hyper-charged electricity from the air. Yuri fondled the bridle in his hand, wondering what he’d done wrong, and when he could stand it no more, he struck off to the Mirror Forge to work, like he always did, to atone for whatever sin was keeping him from his steed.

— 

Mastersmith Altin looked old as the earth, leathery and wrinkled but with biceps as big as watermelons. His beard was thin and long, braided with scrap beads of moonsilver leftover from the forge. All of the metal in the city came from the Mirror Forge, and all of it was worked into form by Altin himself—or the few apprentices he’d deemed worthy to learn from him. Allegedly, Altin had a son, though no other citizen knew or had ever seen him. But there were a lot of things mysterious about the Mastersmith. No one could remember when Altin first took over the forge, or if he’d always been there. He certainly looked old enough, and had a curmudgeonly attitude to match. 

When he saw Yuri, his lips flattened into a thin line. 

“Nothing,” Yuri said, placing the bridle on the workbench and staring at it. It was a masterful piece, each metallic component the result of dozens of iterations. It was what Yuri did, each season, when the skies stayed steedless. What had started as a passable bridle for his mount had become a work of art, decorated in the zig-zag silver all the Bolts wore and showing care down to the minuscule washer that kept the bit moving smoothly. 

“You could be a smith yourself,” Altin grumbled. It was the sort of compliment his apprentices would have killed for, but Yuri just shook his head in despair. 

“I’m a Bolt.” Yuri gestured to the diminutive black wings on his back, emerging between the plates of his silver armor.

Altin snorted. “Bolts have steeds.” 

Yuri grit his teeth together, jaw grinding as he studied the bridle. He couldn’t think of anything else to do to it. The buckles were sewn with silver sinew, polished so brightly they glowed, and the leather gleamed like a still lake under a new moon. 

“Take a break,” Altin said. “You’ve gone out to pasture every stormy night for years.”

“I’m not going to risk missing it.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“How would you know?!” Yuri spat, anger leaking out. The old smith stared him down and Yuri made a face, looking away: “Sorry.”

Altin opened the partition to the kiln. Moonlight, caught and magnified by a thousand mirrors, poured out, molten silver, and flowed down a chute until it reached a series of ingot molds. Tonging one of the ingots, Altin started to hammer it out, flattening it into what could become a pauldron or a chalice or any of the hundreds of things Yuri had seen him make over the years.

“I’ve shod a thousand steeds in my time,” Altin said, many minutes later, while Yuri was idly polishing his bridle. “And spent years in the stables. Stallions, mares, white, black, more colors than the crystals. But they all work a certain a way. They’re proud. They won’t do anything just because you want them to. You have to give a little. Work with them.”

Yuri looked up from the workbench. “I don’t have one to work with; that’s the whole point.”

“Take a rest,” Altin said. “A night off.”

Yuri snorted. You didn’t get nights off from seeking a steed. “What about you? Don’t we have enough moonsilver to last lifetimes?”

Altin smirked, wrinkles looking all the deeper for the moonlight reflecting up from below. “The Sky Prince put in a special request. You know he gets.” 

Everyone knew. The Sky Prince’s requests might be many and strange, but you never turned one down. Yuri rose to his feet, grabbing his bridle, but hesitated on the threshold to the forge. With a pointed glance at Altin, Yuri’s hung the bridle on one of the coat hooks, then walked, feeling naked, away from the city. 

— 

When Yuri’s boots hit the rainbow bridge, the crystals below sizzled with lightning, turning neon, popping with color. It lit up every step, so cheerful and bright he wanted to vomit. The forge was on a distant cloud, and Yuri had to cross no less than five bridges to get back to the massive, main cloud that supported the castle and the great lake beyond. The lake was populated by all manner of fantastic creature: the giant pearly koi whose scales shingled the city roofs, and the bellfrogs whose sonorous ribbits chimed the hours and sunmarks throughout the day. Even the windwood forest at the lake’s edge had the occasional, nimble unicorn or lucky hare. 

But no steeds. 

In the distance, the storm still raged, and the air tingled with its energy, crisp breeze promising rain. Even now, the clouds of the city were darkening as the storm approached. Soon, they’d be enveloped in the thunderstorm, and the rest of the Bolts would fly past Yuri, catching stray lightening and redirecting it to the earth below. He wound up on the farthest cloud from the city center, a puff of cumulus the size of a couple’s bed. He sat, boots dangling over the edge, as the rain started. Everyone else was locked in their homes, crystals sitting like candles in their windows. The rain was frigid, but Yuri couldn’t care. If anything, it was refreshing. 

Lightning started to zap between his boots, and when he held out his hand, greaves glistening, a bolt came to his palm. He passed it back and forth from hand to hand, then chucked it down towards the earth. He saw the shadows of the other Bolts up above, around him, flashes of black wings and crackling hooves. When a powerful horse’s snort sounded directly behind him he jumped, and would have fallen off the cloud entirely if it weren’t for a quick flap of his wings. 

“That’s not funny!” Yuri growled as he whirled on his fellow Bolt. 

But this steed’s back was bare. 

— 

Mastersmith Altin finished his silverwork just as the storm came in. The flow of light ended as clouds swallowed the moon, and the kiln went dark. He closed the partition as the last drips of moonlight leaked out, then put aside the flattened piece for the Sky Prince’s bowl. Everyone else in the city had their windows secured, but Altin left his open, the wind and rain soaking into the cloud floor. 

Storms always made him nostalgic.

Drawing a chair up to the window, Altin took a long, thin box from one of the workbench drawers. The edges were worn down, the top loosely fitting, and Altin opened it with appropriate care, as if the papery container might disintegrate with too much force. The flute inside he’d made himself, in another age, for another life. The keys were inlaid with koi-scale, and sungold filigree wrapped around the moonsilver body. Altin tested the keys for oil, but they were perfectly preserved, as he always kept them. Around the far end was a coil of black braided hair, with a long loose tail that hung down as Altin brought it to his lips. 

The melody should have been drowned out by the storm. A flute was the most delicate instrument, so easily overrun by drum or brass or even a powerful string. 

But Altin’s strength came from elsewhere. The flute’s voice carried up into the stormclouds, a lovesong, and the rain hid his tears.

— 

A chill completely unrelated to the storm ran down Yuri’s spine. He had no bridle. He had no lasso. He had nothing; he had absolutely nothing and the only dream he’d had for half his life was coming true in front of him. 

The steed was raven black, nearly invisible in the dark, a sentient shadow. It wasn’t enormous, but it was muscular and stout, with great black wings arching from its back. The pegasus’ mane dripped rainwater, hanging down past its thick neck, and wisps of fur hung from its forelocks as well, its tail touching the cloud. 

“Are you… mine?” Yuri asked, dumbly. “I don’t — I left the bridle —”

The steed reared up, and when its hooves touched the cloud again sparks flew up. It folded its wings to its back as it turned its side to Yuri, looking him in the eye. A flash of lightning illuminated the steed’s silhouette, and the posture of offering. 

“I don’t have a bridle,” Yuri whispered again, but the steed just snorted, impatient. 

“Okay,” Yuri said. “Okay.” He stepped closer, boots crackling, and the lightning zinged to the horse’s hooves, bouncing between them before disappearing. Grabbing a fistful of the pegasus’ mane, Yuri heaved himself up, flapping his wings to get that extra bit of distance. He landed heavily on the steed’s back, so much more solid than the clouds he was used to.Yuri ran his fingers through the wet mane in disbelief. He was on the back of a steed. This was his steed. His steed!

The mount glanced back, almost in warning, and if Yuri hadn’t fisted his hands in the steed’s mane and hooked his knees over the wings, he would have tumbled off completely as the pegasus took flight. Yuri used his small wings to steady himself as the massive pair on either side of him beat against the stormwinds, cutting through nimbus cloud like butter and sending lightning flying with every strike of its hooves. Yuri should have been trying to get control, should have been trying to get in formation, but all he could focus on was the feel of the rough, cold mane in his fists and the solid roll of muscles beneath him. He’d ridden a mare before, gotten his training, but this— this was what he’d been waiting for, this was his future, his everything. 

The pegasus made its way to a glow-point in the clouds, a place where the charge was rising to form a bolt. Yuri urged the pegasus to clap its hooves against the weak spot, and when he did, lightning so bright it was blinding burst downward to the earth. The strike deafened Yuri with its power. It left his ears ringing, every other sound falling away, as if he was deep underwater. Worse than that: his vision had gone black in the wake of the flash. 

He probably should have been wearing his helmet before he tried to summon a full lightning bolt. 

He kept his hands knotted in the stallion’s mane, trusting that if nothing else, his steed would see him back to safety, back to the stables. Yuri tried not to shiver; at least he could still feel the frigid rain pelting against his skin. 

The Sky Prince was not going to be happy about this.


	3. Colors & Counts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I drastically underestimated the current fandom lull. I didn't realize I hadn't posted since March, and I hadn't realized how much had changed since then. I miss all y'all :(

The Crimson Count loved the city in the sky. He’d been born there, or appeared there, or came to exist there, much like everyone else, and took to the clouds like he was made for it. His small wings matched his front lock of hair, a striking scarlet color in honor of his name. Or at least the Crimson part of it.

The Count part had just sounded nice, and after all the Sky Prince wanted everyone in his court to have exciting titles. Most of what they knew about the world below they learned through dreams, and in dreams everyone was a duke or heiress or emperor. So, there was the Chartreuse Chancellor, the Lavender Lord (he was more purple, really, but where was the fun in that?), and such. The Crimson Count took his job as a member of court very seriously, even if none of them were quite sure what being a part of the Sky Prince’s court entailed. 

Luckily, the Crimson Count had another job, and that was messenger. To assist in his occupation, the Crimson Count had pairs of wings on his wrists and ankles, and even his ears were feathered, though these served no practical purpose that anyone could discern. Normally, the Crimson Count carried everyday information across the city: a love note from Laeo to the miner Ji, who the Count always had issues finding in the tunnels, or an order from one of the Bolts for new horseshoes for Mastersmith Altin. Sometimes, the Count even got to sneak star sugar cookies from the Earl of Indigo to the Viridian Viscount. 

They always asked about the sugar on his lips.

Today, though, the Crimson Count had a dozen rolls of nearly-translucent parchment, filled with fibers of silver and gold and written in rainbow ink. If that wasn’t a dead giveaway about the sender, the recipients would surely understand the sender’s identity from the prismatic wax seal, the silver and gold ribbon, and the infestation of glitter that even now was leaking from the Count’s bag as he carted the scrolls to their destinations. 

First Stop: Laeo and Ji. 

Laeo and Ji lived on one of the highest clouds in the city, right over the thickest of the city’s cloudy support, with a perfect view of the sky and horizon to capture whatever colors they needed in their crystals. Unlike the most of the outlying clouds, there were no bridges, just a series of little clouds, like stepping stones or ephemeral stairs, that led up to their cottage.

The Count hopped from one to the next, wings fluttering, and then gave a knock on their windwood door. It was early enough that the pair shouldn’t have headed into the tunnels just yet, and sure enough, a few moments later the door opened and Laeo’s squinting smile appeared. 

“Minami!” he said. 

Minami huffed: “It’s the Crimson Count!” 

“Oh! You dyed your wings!” Laeo said, touching the feathers at Minami’s ear. Minami’s shoulders fell with a sigh. Perhaps he took his court membership too seriously. “Did you bring cookies?” 

Minami adjusted the crimson tunic he’d donned for the occasion and reached into his shoulder bag, pulling out one of the scrolls. 

“Oh…” Laeo said in surprise, watching it leak glitter. He suddenly understood. “…Is he… throwing another soirée?”

“Worse,” Minami grinned. 

Guang Hong Ji appeared sleepily at Laeo’s side, his crystal freckles matching the sparkles in Laeo’s eyes.

“To the Magenta Magistrate and the Marquis de Magenta,” Laeo started to read. He made a face and looked at Guang Hong: “Did you decide to be a Marquis?” 

Guang Hong shook his head, then shrugged. If that’s what the scroll said, then that’s what he would be.

Laeo scanned the rest of the note, and by the end of it his thick brows had knit into a singular ridged line. “He’s… calling a Contest of the Rainbow Court? A… contest? What sort of contest?” 

“It doesn’t say,” Minami shrugged. 

“Oh! We should bring our crystals,” Guang Hong decided.

Laeo was still trying to decipher the suddenness and strangeness of the invitation. “…did he hear about this from a dream?” Laeo asked. 

“Probably.” 

Laeo tried to wipe the glitter off his hand, but only succeeded in spreading it to his opposite arm. His lips pursed pointedly towards the mess, as if he could shame it off his skin. “Well,” he said, giving up. “At least we’ll get to see him.” 

“Probably,” Guang Hong said. He pawed not-so-helpfully at the glitter on Laeo, and by the time Minami was hopping back down the stones they were both covered head to toe in the viral decoration. They could have been more upset about it, but before he was out of earshot Minami made out the distinct sound of giggling. He snorted. Those two could have been covered in snot and found a way to make the best of it. 

Minami counted the scrolls in his bag. Only eleven more to go. 

— 

At the Dreamery, Phichit opened the cellar-like door to the outside world, met with a bright red eyeful of Minami. 

“You… dyed your wings.”

“For this!” Minami said, thrusting a scroll at the Viridian Viscount. Much more experienced in handling these sorts of letters, Phichit grasped the scroll by one metal button and shook it vigorously outside the door, then opened it and repeated the gesture, sending a shower of sparkles to seep into the cloud below.

“Where does he even get this?” Phichit asked. Glitter, of course, came from the stars, but there was only one person in the city who knew how to harvest it—and clearly he was making the very best of it. 

“Oh, and this one,” Minami said. For the Saffron Sultan. Phichit repeated the process, then brought both scrolls inside and marched over to the Emissary’s Alcove. 

“You did something,” Phichit accused, holding out the scroll. Toph’s eyes snapped open, and he unfolded himself from his meditative pose to take the scroll. Toph and Phichit opened them at the same time, reading through, and then: “Was this from the dream about the decathlon?” 

“I only reported that the dreamer was a good candidate for support,” Toph said. “I didn’t know he’d do…. Well, this.”

“Yes you did,” Phichit said. Even the sprite in his pocket peeked out to shoot an accusatory glare in Toph’s general direction. “He always does this. We haven’t even seen him in almost three months and now we get a — a contest? You know he’s going to come up with his own decathlon.” 

Toph clapped a hand on Phichit’s shoulder. “Cheer up,” he said. “What if it’s fun?” 

— 

“Have… you seen Yuri?” Minami asked when he made it to the stables. The final scroll was addressed to all of the “Dark Knights” — the Bolts — and Minami had sidestepped the issue by hammering it into one of the windwood posts of the pasture fence. Several of the pegasi had already come over to investigate. Four, in fact, judging by the number of muzzles covered in glitter. 

“Anyone?” Minami said again, but the Bolts had run an all night storm and the exhaustion was apparent on the few who were still stabling up their steeds. Minami got a few half-hearted shrugs and that was it.

“Hmm,” Minami hummed, leaping into the air and letting his many wings carry him up to the rosy turret that jutted from one spire of the castle. A thin bridge of crimson crystal connected it to the main structure, but Minami rarely ventured inside the castle proper. The Crimson Count flopped onto his small bed in the turret, looking up at the weave of colored light on the ceiling. He only had a few hours to get ready for the event. “I wonder where he went.” 

— 

The Earl of Indigo was a citizen named Emil, whose normal occupation was chef, cook, baker, and all around sommelier for the city in the sky. The baking part was his particular favorite: star-sugar cookies, pearl swirl bread, and of course, donuts with rainbow sprinkles (made from real rainbows). Emil had been working from dawn to dusk each day at the behest of the Sky Prince, and it was only in the final hour that he received a glittery scroll inviting him to the very event he’d unknowingly been preparing for. 

His clothes were covered in baking flower, so he changed them out for the velvety blue trousers and jacket that the Sky Prince had commissioned for him when he’d ordained his Rainbow Court. Emil wasn’t sure exactly what an Earl looked like, but he thought he looked nice enough as he twisted in front of the mirror, attempting to tame the runaway scruff that emanated from scalp and chin and lip alike. Minami had even dyed his wings for the occasion, so Emil brought out a vat and some powdered-crystal dye and ever-so-awkwardly leaned backwards until his wing-tips were submerged. How Minami had dyed the entire things was a mystery, but Emil hoped this would be good enough, and that the contest wasn’t about how well anyone could color their wings. 

When he was as good as he was going to get, Emil left his home-slash-kitchen-slash-bakery-slash-winery and walked along the cloud-cobble streets towards the stable. 

All of the pegusi for the court were in their finest tack already, white saddles and bridles atop the bright colored coats. Emil’s steed matched his clothes, a bright blue-purple with a sapphire on its brow. 

“Hey, Mickey!” Emil called, seeing the Lavender Lord pulling his pegasus towards a mounting block. Michele’s pegasus was pure purple, amethyst-stoned, and Mickey looked like the pinnacle of discomfort in his elegant purple suit. Emil steered his pegasus over, pulling up alongside Mickey’s, and elbowed the Lord. “Aren’t you excited?!” 

Mickey tried to look away, to avoid eye contact, to pretend as if Emil didn’t exist. 

But Emil was persistent. 

“I bet we’ll have to play windwood whistles or draw our favorite dream or see who can touch their toes,” Emil said. All of those sounded like exquisite challenges. 

“Hmph,” Mickey said as they walked their horses towards the castle grounds. “It should be an actual contest. One of horsemanship, endurance, strength.” 

“Oh, I don’t think he’s like that,” Emil mused. 

When he wasn’t pretending to be the Lavender Lord, Mickey spent his days herding sleep sheep and carding their wool. The dreamy creatures loved to wander all across the outer city clouds, and poor Mickey didn’t even have a hound to help keep them in line. Emil always sent him batches of fresh bread, but Mickey wasn’t the type who could accept much kindness. “Maybe,” he said simply.

They entered through the pearly gates and found themselves in the vast greeting field, with its swirling rainbow path of cloudstone leading to the castle doors. Minami wiggled on his ruby-stoned pegasus, while Phichit’s emerald mount pawed at the cloud below. It was odd to see the dreamkeeper wearing only deep greens instead of his normal iridescent robes. He hadn’t bothered to dye his wings, either, though he had slipped a few crystal beads onto the shafts of his feathers, creating loose-hanging light ribbons between them in his color.

The Chartreuse Chancellor showed up, looking absolutely ridiculous, his hair flung forward over his face as if he’d had his back to an explosion, and the garish brightness of his lime-green robes was only furthered by the color he’d dusted on his cheeks and above his eyes. He probably would have covered his pegasus in makeup, too, if the Sky Prince had given them more than a few hours notice. 

Emil sent a happy prayer for that. 

Laeo and Guang Hong arrived on the same pegasus, Guang Hong’s arms steadied around Laeo’s waist. Even the Bolts were showing up. All the ones that had steeds, at least. There was that one oddball — Yuri? — who’d never managed to get a pegasus. 

They all expected the Sky Prince to be late to his own event, but as the bellfrogs tolled the hour, the Saffron Sultan was missing as well. 

“Was he still meditating?” Laeo asked Phichit. 

“No, he was up when I left,” Phichit said. “He was trying to close his cufflinks.” 

“Typical,” one of the Bolts grumbled. Their black pegasi were thicker and stockier than the elegantly limbed rainbow pegasi, and they hung back from the court in their silver armor. This was definitely not their job, playing games with the Sky Prince, but he was their prince, and so they came.

Ten minutes later the doors to the castle burst open, revealing not the Sky Prince they all expected, but a rather panicked looking Emissary. Toph, the Saffron Sultan. His eyes were wide, and he pointed over his shoulder, towards the castle. 

“He’s gone!”


	4. Castles & Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got up through Chapter 9 written, it's just finding time to post ;A;. Sorry folks!

— ONE WEEK EARLIER —

Most self-respecting castles could boast three or four towers, the occasional spire and turret, and perhaps even a swirling, onion-topped minaret. But the castle in the sky cared more about first impressions than self-respect, and even the Sky Prince himself occasionally found a new spire where he least expected it. It didn’t help that the castle spanned several separate clouds to support its otherwise unsustainable architecture—rainbow bridges arching between high minarets and towers a hundred feet off the ground. There was even a courtyard lined in windwood trees on the seventh story.

The colors of the castle echoed the rest of the city: cloudstone in bright hues towards the base of each building, swirling into pastels and ultimate pearly white shingles and onion domes with spirals of color crystals. A few different citizens lived in the castle, but for all its grandeur, the structure was remarkably empty. 

“I’m _bored_ , Yakov,” the Sky Prince sighed. He stood on the balcony of his greeting chamber, leaning over a railing that looked like unicorn horn. His hair was made of moonlight, twisted up and secured with a sungold needle dripping in pearls, and his eyes were bright as the cloudless sky. He wore a striking white uniform accented in sungold embroidery with matching buttons and buckles. His grand cloak had a golden mantle with white fur trim into which a spectrum of color crystals had been sewn, their pairs wisping around his feet, creating a fabric of light that fanned out behind him in the breeze. 

He was a picture of perfection—always and effortlessly—save for the pout that currently sat heavy on his lips. 

Yakov was the Sky Prince’s man, in charge of shepherding the ruler when the Sun and Moon were unavailable, which was nearly always. 

“Has there been any news?” the Sky Prince asked.

“You have two scraps of ribbon that the songbirds left on your windowsill,” Yakov said. “And one letter from Toph.” 

“Toph!” the Sky Prince’s eyes lit up. “Can I see him, Yakov?”

“He sent you a note.” 

“But—”

Yakov gave the Sky Prince a strict look, and the prince’s posture melted, the trim of his cloak puddling on the floor as he slid down the railing: “But _Yakov_.” The Sky Prince laid himself dramatically on the ground, staring up at the sky. It was another perfect day. He’d made sure of that. Just like yesterday.

Yakov was more than used to such theatrics from the Sky Prince, and simply walked up beside him and opened the scroll. 

“My Prince,” Yakov read. “This week we encountered an increase in recurrent nightmares. The Dreamkeeper summoned me no less than seven times for interference, and—”

“Is there any _good_ news, Yakov?” the Sky Prince asked, sitting up. A breeze blew across the balcony, making his silver hair sway. He took the scroll from Yakov, scanning it. 

“Nightmares! Chasing. Lateness,” the Sky Prince read off as he scanned down the list. “Ah! Look! ‘However, a few dreams have shown exceptional resilience, such as the preacher who entered a decathlon. He may be a candidate for assistance if the current regime is inducing mental duress’. That’s wonderful, Yakov!” 

“Yes, I suppose it’s good to try addressing the issue head on—”

“No no no,” the Sky Prince shook his head. “Yakov. A decathlon! We’ll throw a contest for my court!” The prince was on his feet in moments, wings flapping so eagerly a translucent feather fell from his back. Yakov scooped it up as the Sky Prince danced away, then followed him as he fluttered through his chambers. “It will be perfect! Everyone can come to the castle, Yakov! You can’t say no: that’s how a contest works!” 

The Sky Prince was beaming, his hair radiant and glowing with excitement. He plucked a quill from his desk, made of his own twinkling feather, and rainbow ink poured from it onto his parchment. Yakov didn’t dare peer over the Sky Prince’s shoulder. Not for fear of retribution, but for fear of what he would read. 

“Here, here is my list of supplies. We’ll need the entire city to prepare! I need crystals and cookies and some new bowls, a coat from the Chancellor, and medals, of course! How do you make _bronze_ , Yakov? Do you think Altin knows? Well, ask him anyway.”

Yakov looked at the sheet of paper and wondered how anyone could write a dozens-long list in a matter of seconds, but the Sky Prince was exquisitely talented at many, many things. Staying out of trouble was certainly not one of them. 

“Alright, Yakov, I cannot attend to you any more,” the Sky Prince said, sweeping to another room, virtually gliding for the excited speed of his wings. “I have to prepare the Decathlon! Do you think Mom and Dad will like it?” 

“The Moon is —” Yakov started. 

“I bet they will love it!” the Sky Prince decided, and then he was gone, leaving an impression of swirling rainbows in his wake. 

Yakov took off his cap and wiped the sweat off his bald forehead. He was really too old for this. 

— 

Every day, the Sky Prince woke up and went over to his globe. It was a rather large globe — two stories in fact — and the Sky Prince walked along the balcony at its equator to study the patterns in the earth’s sky. A gentle wave of his hand here, a whistle of air, and he guided the clouds around the globe, ensuring everything was well for the season. Their own tiny city in the sky was represented by a suspended rainbow orb, currently floating in the northern hemisphere, piggybacking off the jetstream that swirled around the earth at that latitude. 

There were icons of the Sun and Moon as well, positioned in relation to the earth, showing their smiling faces slowly orbiting. 

“Morning Dad,” the Sky Prince would say every day. “Morning Mom!” But there was never any response, just their continued shine.

When the Sky Prince was satisfied with the globe, well… that’s when he was never quite sure what to do. He was supposed to help everyone below, to make sure they had food and water, rain and shine, wind and calm. And he was supposed to be the Prince for the city, too, though… well, no one had ever told him how to do that. 

Mostly, he relied on dreams to figure it out, and Toph was his greatest source of information. The Emissaries went into dreams, either to help calm the people below who were in distress, or to inspire the people below who showed a promise for greatness and compassion. The Sky Prince always asked Toph for details. What did they wear, what did they do? But everyone who was a prince in their dreams seemed to have different ideas of what it meant, and some of them were enough to give the Sky Prince himself nightmares. He didn’t want to impose taxes or create trade sanctions or order executions — whatever those were! 

But sometimes Toph wrote to him about contests and competitions, plays and paintings, gold medals given to exceptional souls. And sometimes Toph wrote to him about families and taking care of children and having a husband or wife to go on adventures with. 

The Sky Prince would go out to the balcony and look at the Sun, or the Moon, and wonder what his family was like, and if maybe, one day, he could have his own. 

— 

“Altin delivered your request today,” Yakov said, carrying a windwood box branded with the Mastersmith’s seal. “… Your Highness?” 

Yakov took a breath to steady himself, not knowing what he’d see when he pushed open the door. Over the last several days, each floor of the castle had been transformed into a staging area for a different type of contest. When Yakov had pointed out that a decathlon only had ten challenges, the Sky Prince had stared at him for a solid minute, then blinked and said, “Fine! We’ll call it a decathALOT.” 

He’d turned and walked out of the room after that stunning show of creative problem solving, and Yakov counted the minutes until the Sky Prince returned: “…. Did you say there was a package?” 

“Yes.” 

Yakov set the box down and pulled out the masterwork bowl. It had no special filigree, no ornamentation whatsover. It was even missing the normal pockmarking used to honor the Moon. 

“It’s perfect,” the Sky Prince said, clasping the bowl and heading towards one of the many spiral staircases in the castle. After a lengthy internal debate, Yakov followed, finding the dining hall table covered in silver and gold bowls filled with water. Or partially filled. Actually— 

The Sky Prince struck the side of the bowl with a woodwind mallet and then swirled the wood around the lip of the bowl, creating a singing tone. He tuned it against several other bowls, filling the dining hall with a choir of hollow, beautiful notes. “This is the contest to see who can make the bowls sing most beautifully,” the Sky Prince explained. “I was missing a low C.” The new bowl fit perfectly into the arrangement, as if a space had been kept for it. “Now it’s finally finished.” 

Yakov couldn’t argue with that. 

— 

“Well, Yakov, I think it’s almost ready,” the Sky Prince declared a few days later, standing in the grand entry hall on the ground floor of the castle. There was a glittering mosaic of the Sun and Moon beneath his feet, and above a chandelier of pure white crystals that glowed with their pairs. 

“For what, Your Highness?” Yakov asked. 

“The Decathalot! It’s tonight!” The Sky Prince said, leaping from tile to tile like a ballerina.

Yakov blinked: “… Your Highness. Have you told anyone?” 

The Sky Prince froze mid jump. 

“Oh.” 

Yakov cleared his throat. “Perhaps you should write invitations.” 

“Perhaps?!” The Sky Prince grabbed his shoulders. “Yakov! What sort of advisor are you?! OF COURSE I should write invitations!” And then he was gone again. 

Yakov’s wings were barely bigger than his hands, and his gut weighed a dozen times more, so instead of flying after the Sky Prince, he begrudgingly trudged up several staircases until he came to the Sky Prince’s study. The prince was sifting glitter from his stash of starlight, adding copious amounts to each of the scrolls he’d somehow already written, then rolling them up and tying them in ribbon. 

“Here you go, Yakov. Send these to the Count!” The Sky Prince insisted, and Yakov’s wardrobe was doomed for days with the sparkles. “Oh— and I need you to be the Blue Baron again. You will, won’t you?” 

“… You mean I have to participate?” Yakov’s face had never looked more frustrated nor froglike. 

The Sky Prince bat his lashes. “Pleeeeease, Yakov?” And to the resulting silence: “There’s an invitation for you,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be rude to turn down an invitation from the Sky Prince?” If possible, Yakov’s frown deepened, and then he was turning on his heel to drop the scrolls off at the Messenger’s tower. 

— 

The Sky Prince slowly glided from floor to floor, checking each of his contests. They were all perfect — of course they were — but there was something missing, and the Sky Prince didn’t know what. It was nearly time for the court to arrive, and the Bolts, whom the Sky Prince had invited because surely they would enjoy a good contest. In fact, the Sky Prince probably should have been getting his own mount from the stables, but instead he found himself hungry for inspiration, to find that final piece. 

He landed on the mural on the ground floor, inspecting the silver moon and golden sun. If he was to be a proper Sky Prince, he needed to get this right. So, with a glance around for Yakov, the Sky Prince snuck to the basement door and descended to the Dreamery. 

“Sultan?” he called. “Viscount?” Toph always insisted he be called Toph, but the Sky Prince knew most princes had a court, and everyone at court had some sort of pompous title. It was only proper. 

“Your Highness?!”

The Sky Prince jumped, twisting to the Emissary’s Alcove where Toph was still as a statue in shock. He had on a suit the color of egg yolk, with one gulden cufflink and a half cape. “What are you doing here, Your Highness? Isn’t the contest soon?” Toph asked, pausing in his endeavor to get on the second cufflink.

“I just need —” the Sky Prince went from bubble to bubble, looking at the worlds inside. Everything was so ordinary. Homes. Fields. Roads. Where were all of the _dreams_?! Surely these were simply the commoners’ dreams. If the Sky Prince could find the dream of a prince or a king or an archdeacon—whatever that was—surely it would be stunning, beautiful, and exactly the sort of inspiration he needed.

The Sky Prince’s nose tickled, and the tickle grew to a terrible itch, and before he could stop himself he sneezed so hard the bubble beside him burst. “I’m sorry!” he said, to the bubble or the person below he’d just rudely awakened, it was impossible to tell.

“Be careful, Your Highness,” Toph warned, watching the Sky Prince in his mirror as he fussed with his cufflink. He was so very close to getting it clasped that he didn’t see the Sky Prince wander farther away, nor spot a dream that was entirely made of swirling colors. He looked up just in time to see the Sky Prince lean his face towards it, mesmerized, and then, with a flash of Prince-colored light, he was gone, pulled into the bubble. 

“Your Highness!” Toph panicked. He grabbed a cupful of sleep draught and ran towards the bubble, popping several that were in his way. He was only a few feet away when the light inside the bubble flashed bright white, and it popped in a flurry of tiny iridescent particles, Sky Prince and all.


	5. Horses & Humans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TUPLES <3 I can't get into my tumblr for some reason right now but I got the message about your recommendation. Thank you so very much :) You're keeping me going! Here is another chapter to express my gratitude ^-^

Yuri woke up not even knowing how he’d fallen asleep. The last thing he remembered was the biggest lightning strike of his life, then darkness and ringing and the rhythmic motion of his steed beneath him. 

His steed!

With a jerk, Yuri sat up. His head swam, and his vision revealed only a shifting haze. With a swoon, he found himself on his back again, resting on some sort of plush bed with his wings too weak to even flutter. When a hand splayed out on his chest, he nearly panicked, flinging an arm to bat it away, but someone caught his wrist. 

Where had all his armor gone?

There was a garbled sound—was someone trying to talk to him? 

“I can’t hear you,” Yuri whispered. Whoever else was there released his wrist, and Yuri rubbed at his ears, blinked his eyes, trying to get his senses restored. It was terrifying, this dark new reality. 

“Where’s my steed?” Yuri asked. Even his own voice was indistinguishable, and he prayed he wasn’t speaking gibberish. His question was only met with more garbles. “Is he okay?” The hand on his chest gave a reassuring pat, then lifted. Yuri stayed still for all of a split second, then tried just propping himself up on his elbows. He could tell there was a window—or some sort of light source—to his right, and if he looked towards it and held up a hand he could see the vaguest dark blog, a transition from light to dark. “Am I home? The stables?” 

The garbled response was short, to the point. The Bolts all loved hearing themselves talk and would have lorded this over Yuri. His first storm and he gets taken out by the very first bolt he summons? They’d never let him live it down. Wherever Yuri was, it wasn’t with his team. 

“Who are you?” Yuri asked, but then everything turned upside down and he fell back to darkness.

— 

The next time Yuri woke up, the world had slightly more definition, fuzzy edges to broad shapes of light and dark. When he said “Hello?” he could almost make out his own distant, indistinguishable voice, but there was no response. This time, when he sat up, his head behaved, and the next minute he swung his legs to the side, finding the edge of the bed and then reaching his toes down until they connected with a plush rug. Without the blanket of the bed he felt a sharp chill, and quickly ran his hand down his body, finding himself in only the simple shirt and trousers that normally comprised the bottom layer of his armor. 

Worse: the cold made him realize he desperately needed a bathroom. 

Great. 

He already knew he wasn’t at his own house. It was too cold, the bed too soft, and his floors were made of cloud or windwood, with no rugs around. Yuri started to step slowly, hands stretched before him. He avoided the nightstand and followed the wall around, came upon a dresser, a window sill. Everything was so… solid. Even cloudstone had a certain give to it, but this? Whatever this place was made out of?

Yuri frowned. Where in the city was there anything like this?

He found a door, which led to a small room that he couldn’t even extend both arms in, and blessedly a hinged seat for a toilet. Given that he couldn’t exactly see where he was aiming, Yuri sat. 

Was it possible the Sky Prince had been so upset he’d banished Yuri? Was that even something he could do? The more Yuri thought about it, pressing his feet against the cold floor, the greater that sinking feeling grew. The truth was: there wasn’t anywhere in the city like this. 

Yuri wasn’t in the city at all. 

— 

Yuri continued his exploration of the room, finding another door opposite the window, but this one led into a bigger, brighter room, and Yuri’s tentative call inside didn’t receive a response. He hated acting this shy or cowardly or weak, but he found himself backing into the room he’d woken up in, overcome with a sudden tiredness. He hid under the covers on the bed, shivering, and tried not to let the growing panic take hold of him. 

Wherever he was, he was okay, and his steed was okay. Probably. And his vision was getting better, even if everything was just blurs for now. 

It was good enough that he noticed when the door opened from the increase in light, and the garbled voice said something short.

“Hello,” Yuri said again, sitting up. 

Garbles. A Question. 

“I still can’t hear you,” Yuri said.

He felt the bed shift and then a hand touching his, moving up to his wrist. It tugged, leading Yuri’s hand to a bowl, warm, and the handle of a spoon. Abruptly recognizing that he was starving, Yuri turned towards the bowl and bowed over it, bringing the spoon towards his lips. He hissed and burned himself the first time, then went more slowly, sputtering at the initial taste. 

He was certainly, definitely, undoubtedly beyond the city. This soup didn’t taste airy and light. Didn’t have the creaminess of sleep sheep’s milk nor the spice of red crystal dust. All of the flavors were completely new, and twisted and writhed in his stomach. 

“It’s… good,” Yuri forced. “Thank you.” He laid back in the bed, hands on his stomach. “I’m not in the city, am I?” 

A garble, paired with a single tap to his hand. “One for no?” Yuri asked. Two taps. “Two for yes.” Another two taps. 

“Okay,” Yuri said. “Am I banished from the city?” One tap. 

“Are you from the city?” Hesitance, then a single tap. 

“How did you find me?” The touch made a swirl on his hand. That wasn’t a yes/no question. Yuri grimaced—this was harder than it seemed. “Did you find me with my steed?”

Hesitation, then two taps. 

“And he’s okay?” Two taps. 

“Can I go to him?” This was the longest hesitation yet, then the hand curled around his, giving a ginger tug. Yuri got out of bed again, carefully, and bundled fabric was pressed against his chest. Unfolding it, Yuri recognized the shape of a long jacket and pulled it on, buckling it at the front. Then, boots nudged against his feet. He slid toe-first into the fur-lined things and then followed the tugging hand from the room, out a second door. A burst of frigid air whipped around them in greeting, signaling in conjunction with blazing brightness that they’d gone outside. There was an odd crunch under Yuri’s boots, like stale lightning, or something else entirely, condensing beneath his soles.

As they came to another shadow, the structure must have blocked the wind. It smelled like a stable—sort of. At least there was the faint scent of ions that normally accompanied the black pegasi. The hand let go of his own, and Yuri stopped, unsure of what he should do without guidance. He wanted to keep following the darkish smear, but after the brightness outside everything was going black again.

“Hello?” he said after a moment, when nothing changed. The clop of hooves Yuri could distinguish by their rhythm alone. He reached towards a blacker shadow than the rest and his hand came in contact with the warm body and tingling fur of a pegasus. “Hey,” Yuri whispered. “There you are.”

He felt a warm snort against his face, then the dinner-plate cheek of the pegasus nudging against his own. Yuri wrapped his arms around the beast’s neck, and he never wanted to let go again. His wings beat sympathetically, too relieved to stop them. Finally. Finally. Yuri’s hands stroked down to the powerful shoulders, then the glossy wings. “I was waiting for you for so long,” Yuri said. “It felt like forever. I thought you’d given up on me.” The pegasus tossed his head, like rejecting that idea, and then hooked his chin over Yuri’s shoulder. Part of Yuri wanted to be angry that the pegasus had stayed away so long, but the joy of finally having one—even if he’d been an amazing idiot about it—far outweighed that hurt.

“I promise I’ll brush you and feed you ion oats and get you your bridle as soon as we’re back at the city.” The pegasus tossed its head again, then turned away abruptly, and the next thing Yuri knew the hand was at his wrist again. “Where did he go?” Yuri asked, but the hand just tugged him back the way they came, and by the time they reached the bedroom, Yuri was tired enough to fall right to sleep.

— 

“Are you awake?” 

Yuri blinked his eyes, rubbed his ears, and then turned towards the sound. “What?”

“Are you awake?” He could hear the words, actually hear them, and his face lit into a decidedly uncharacteristic smile. 

“I can hear you,” Yuri said. It still wasn’t very clear, like there was a wobbly pane of water blocking his ear, but he could hear just enough to make out the lilt and intonation of words. 

“Good.” 

“You’re the one who found me? Who’s been looking after me,” Yuri said. “I’m Yuri. What’s your name?”

“… Otabek,” he said. Yuri watched his shadow come closer and sit on the edge of the bed. “Can you see?”

“Still just shapes, some blurs,” he admitted, testing his hand in front of his eyes. “There’s lighter areas now.” As opposed to the burnout his eyes had gone through after the whiter-than-white lightning. Yuri chewed on his lip: “What happened?”

The bed shifted again. “You passed out. Your steed must have brought you here. You’re lucky you didn’t fall off. I had to pry your hands open before you let go.” Yuri remembered holding onto his steed’s mane as if his life depended on it. 

Maybe it had. 

“Where—where are we?” Yuri asked. “Where’s here?” 

“You’re near a small village called Matya in the Ural Mountains,” Otabek said. 

“On the surface?”

“Surface?”

“We’re not in the sky.”

“We’re very high in the mountains,” Otabek said. “Sometimes the clouds come in below us, in the valleys.”

Oh, shit. Yuri wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was ever supposed to go to the surface. Even with dreams, only Emissaries were allowed to go into them and interact with the people below. And here Yuri was, sleeping in one of their beds and peeing in their toilet and eating their soup. He folded his wings abruptly against his back, as if somehow, maybe, this ‘Otabek’ hadn’t seen them yet.

“I need to leave,” Yuri murmured. “You can take me back to my steed. I can—”

His voice cut off. He could what? Fly blindly into the sky? Hope that the city was within reach? The city circled the whole world, and he had the gall to think he’d find it without even being able to see?

“It’s just you and I here,” Otabek said, as if he’d followed Yuri’s thoughts to the same conclusion. “I haven’t told anyone else. You can stay as long as you need.”

Yuri’s cheeks lit with sudden redness. He’d been so excited about his steed, so proud. And look where it got him. “You aren’t afraid of me?” Yuri asked, allowing his wings to slowly unfold. If Otabek had taken off his armor, of course Otabek had seen his wings. And the wings of his pegasus. 

“Should I be?” Otabek’s voice was smooth and even keel. Yuri had always imagined humans to be more prone to panic and hysteria. Maybe he’d been listening to Toph tell too many stories about nightmares.

“No,” Yuri said. What was he going to do? Summon lightning? The only scent of a storm he’d gotten since he arrived was his own pegasus. 

“Do you need anything else?” Otabek asked. “I have to go to the village. I should be back in a few hours. I’ll leave a glass of milk and bread on the nightstand.”

Yuri hated, hated being taken care of. The revulsion bubbled up in his throat, but he swallowed it down and simply nodded. “…Thank you.”

And while he was gone, Yuri could take his leave.


	6. Surprises & Surface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, huge gratitude to the folks reading along. I'm at 31k -- over halfway there!

The dream was everything the Sky Prince imagined. In the distance a figure glided across the ground: leaping, twirling, and casting his arms in great arcs. Color flowed off his person, cast in the direction of motion, leaving mesmerizing patterns suspended in space. What remarkable leader must this man be? What masterful artist? Truly, the Sky Prince had never seen a dream so beautiful, a pure and elegant reduction of movement into color. The man danced from foot to foot, as if he weren't even touching the ground, each step bringing him closer to the Sky Prince. 

"Your majesty!" the Sky Prince called, because only a great monarch could possibly create such wonder. The Sky Prince flared out his wings to their full splendor as the man's eyes landed on him, auburn brown and wide. "Greetings! I am the Sky Prince."

The man tumbled forward in shock, and then everything went black. 

— 

The Sky Prince fell like a stone. He tried to flap his wings, but a split second later he collided with the floor, jamming his elbow, then his ankle, and finally his head on something unbearably firm. 

He lied there, aching everywhere, unsure what had happened and why. Everything felt _so heavy_  and _so hard_. 

Someone was scrambling beside him. 

A faint light suddenly illuminated the space. The Sky Prince was crumpled on the floor of a small room, complete with closet, desk, and rumpled bed occupied by a very frightened man with auburn eyes holding an oil lamp. An oil lamp?

The Sky Prince slowly, painfully heaved himself to his feet, though it took every ounce of his strength to do so, then held out his hand grandly towards the man. "Your majesty," he said. "I am your Sky Prince.” 

The lamp shook, or rather, the man's hand shook as he stared at The Sky Prince, looking at his face, then glancing down, then up again. The Sky Prince followed his eyes, looking down, wondering if his clothing had been dirtied by his fall. 

He was completely naked. 

The Sky Prince blinked in confusion. Did all Emissaries lose their clothes when they went into dreams? He certainly didn’t think so. Toph would have mentioned that, wouldn’t he? It seemed like a rather important detail to omit. 

Well, that would explain the less than stellar reaction.

“Where did the other part of your dream go?” the Sky Prince asked, deciding for the moment to pretend he wasn’t naked. 

“D-dream?” the man finally stuttered. The Sky Prince expected a King to be more eloquent, but then, he also expected a King to dream up a much grander bedroom. 

“Yes,” the Sky Prince said, “with the colors. I organized a contest, you see, for my court, but something is missing. I saw your dream, and I thought you could help me.” The Sky Prince took a step forward, sitting on the edge of the bed, and the man pulled his knees up to his chest beneath the blankets. “Can we go back to that part of the dream?”

The man, whose hand still quivered, looked overwhelmed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The dream—You startled me and I—“ The Sky Prince leaned forward. “I woke up.” 

— 

For a solid minute, the Sky Prince didn’t say a word. He sat still as a statue, staring at the fidgeting man with auburn eyes who couldn’t keep himself calm. He’d wedged himself in the very smallest possible space in the farthest corner of the bed from The Sky Prince, almost as if he was frightened _of him_ , though The Sky Prince couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t like the Sky Prince had ever ordered ‘trade sanctions’ or whatever it was.

“…so, you’re awake?” the Sky Prince asked. 

The man set the lamp down beside the bed and pinched his hand, making a face. “Yes.”

“And… I’m here?” the Sky Prince asked. 

The man reached a single finger out, and when he came into contact with Victor’s bicep it felt tingly and warm. The Sky Prince shivered. “Yes.”

“Then…I’m on the surface,” the Sky Prince realized. “And… I don’t know how to get back.” 

“You— are you really a spirit?” the man asked. 

“I am a citizen of the land above. My job is to watch over the world and make sure there is enough sunshine and enough rain, enough snow and wind, and that sun warms the summers and the moon watches the winters.”

“… A spirit,” the man confirmed. He suddenly recalled etiquette. ”I’m Yuuri.”

“King Yuuri,” the Sky Prince bowed. 

“N-no,” Yuuri waved his hands swiftly back and forth as if he could dispel the thought with a gesture. “No. Just Yuuri. Yuuri Katsuki.”

“Katsuki,” the Sky Prince repeated. It was beautiful, really. He leaned towards Yuuri: “Is that a type of Sultan? A Raja? Emperor?” 

“No!” Yuuri said more emphatically. “No. I’m just Yuuri. I’m an innkeeper’s son. We run this onsen.” Yuuri gestured to the space they were in. If this really wasn’t a dream, if this was reality, then the bedroom wasn’t something that Yuuri had just imagined. This was his actual quarters. The place he slept every night. And the Sky Prince was in his bed.

It was a very small bed. 

The Sky Prince sat back on his heels. It didn’t make sense. That dream, that incredible, miraculous dream, had been created by an innkeeper’s son? Someone who cleaned rooms and cooked and kept home for others? A common person. It didn’t make sense at all. The Sky Prince had expected a life of grandeur to equal that of the dream, and instead he found the exact opposite: someone painfully ordinary.

He studied Yuuri. In dim candlelight, his auburn eyes looked like chocolate mixed with gold. His black hair, rumpled from sleep, stuck out like sweet grass from a hay pile, and his lips and nose lacked anything noteworthy at all, except perhaps the shyness that pulled at the corners. The Sky Prince couldn’t quite call him plain, but… ordinary, certainly, besides a strange sort of feeling growing in his gut.

Or maybe the Sky Prince had it all wrong, and there were more important qualities than royal blood and rulership to determine one’s dreams. Perhaps it was a reflection of something else entirely, and it made the Sky Prince itchy with curiosity. 

“Tell me all about yourself,” the Sky Prince insisted, creeping towards Yuuri again. The innkeeper’s son tried to scoot backwards, but had nowhere left to go, wedged between the wall and the bedframe. Yuuri’s eyes darted down again and he cleared his throat. 

“F-first,” Yuuri said. “You have to put on a robe.” 

— 

“Now isn’t the time for panic,” Toph said to a panicking group of citizens. 

“He’s gone, he’s gone!” Minami was crying, thick diamond tears trickling off his cheeks. 

“This is the end of the world, the culmination of all great achievement swallowed in a moment of mystification,” wept Georgi, the Chartreuse Chancellor. 

“Enough!” Toph’s booming brass voice cut off the chaos, vast wings casting out to take up the space. That silenced everyone well enough. “If we do not stay calm, we cannot save our prince. Now, Dreamkeeper, tell everyone what happens when a citizen is in a popped dream.” 

Phichit, still in his stately green, took a deep breath as everyone turned to him. “Well, when a citizen goes into a dream, they go into a place between realms. If they come out of the bubble themselves, they return to the sky. If they are forced out of the bubble by the waking human… then they are pulled into the human’s realm.” 

“So… he’s on the surface?” Laeo asked, hugging a shivering Guang Hong to his chest. 

“We can go there,” the leader of the Bolts stepped forward, his haughtiness rivaling Toph’s charisma. “My Bolts can ride to the surface and scout for him.”

“It’s not that easy, Jacques,” Toph cut in quickly. “Phichit.” 

Phichit frowned: “Even if we go from the sky to the surface, we haven’t crossed realms. We won’t be there in the same way our prince is there. We’d be more like… like reflections.”

“So? We could still find him,” Jacques said. “All we know is that he was in a part of the world that was asleep. That could be half the globe. No one’s faster in the air than my Bolts.”

“Oh,” Guang Hong said very softly, and yet they were all so unused to him speaking that they turned to look at the crystal-freckled face. “What you mean is… even if we find him…” Guang Hong swallowed against his tears “… we still don’t know how to get him back.” 

—

Yuuri Katsuki hadn’t the slightest clue what to do with himself. He’d left his bedroom to fetch a robe for the strikingly perfect man from his dream and when he returned, said man was curled up on his bed fast asleep, face pushed into Yuuri’s pillow. As Yuuri pulled the sheet up over him, he caught sight of two odd patches on his back, just over his shoulder blades that seemed to catch the light, almost like pearl or a soap bubble. Overwhelmed with the sudden urge to touch them, Yuuri swiftly drew the sheet up to the man’s neck. 

He’d called himself the Sky Prince. Twice. Once in Yuuri’s dream and again, standing in all his naked glory like some masterful statue.

Sky Prince?

Even when he slept he looked more beautiful than anyone Yuuri had seen in his life, outshining even the woodblock prints of famous actors and empresses. Yuuri just hung there, in the doorway, watching.

He knew he should wake his parents, and his sister—

He smelled the telltale smoke moments before he heard her: “Yuuri, what was all that noise?” Twisting around, Yuuri saw the dot of red light from her long cigarette. Mari’s face was barely lit, just a faint outline in orangey red. 

“Something strange happened,” Yuuri said, pulling his door shut before she could get too inquisitive. They stood together in the dim hall. “We should wake up mom and dad.”

Ten minutes later, the four Katsukis were grouped in Yuuri’s bedroom, staring at the sleeping man with silver hair.

“And look,” Yuuri said, carefully drawing down the sheet to reveal the two marks on the prince’s back. “These are right where his wings were, in the dream.” 

“He doesn’t look like a spirit,” Mari said blandly. “Besides the whole hair thing.” The prince’s silver hair had a faint glow to, like it amplified any light that touched it.

“Yuuri, we’ll watch over him. You go fetch Minako,” his mother said. “She’ll know what to do.”

“But—“ Yuuri didn’t want to just leave the prince. He felt compelled to stay at the prince’s side, but his mother put her hands on his shoulders and walked him out the bedroom door.

“Hurry,” she said. “We don’t want our guests to wake up and think something is wrong.” 

— 

The Yu-Topia Onsen had a single horse stabled near its outskirts, which Yuuri begrudgingly saddled for the ride to Minako’s. The route meandered along the shoreline of the island, then crossed a bridge into the village proper, where Minako’s home and advisory were. Yuuri himself had apprenticed under Minako—not for spirit advisory, but dance, though she insisted they were not as separate as most people imagined. 

“It’s not even dawn,” Minako groaned as she answered the door, sizing Yuuri up. 

“Have you heard of a Sky Prince?” Yuuri asked. 

“Ruler of the skies, son of celestial bodies, maker of rain and rainbows,” Minako listed. “You woke me up for that?”

“N-no!” Yuuri said, hand splaying on the door before she could shut it. “I— I woke you up because he’s in my bedroom.” 

Minako grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and shook him back and forth. “Yuuri Katsuki if you’re lying to me—”

“I swear!” Yuuri choked. “I saw him in my dream, and I got so startled I woke up. But then he was there too—”

Minako let go of him, but only to slap him across the cheek. “What have you done?!” Minako gasped. Then: “Take me to him!” Then: “No. Wait. Let me get dressed.” 

Yuuri just stood there, stunned, as the pink shape of a hand slowly blossomed on his cheek. What had he done? What had _Yuuri_ done? Yuuri frowned, feeling like he was sinking. 

What _had_ he done?


	7. Snow & Steeds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a bit of a struggle, just because writing Otabek is always a struggle. ~ Promise it picks up soon!

The walls of Otabek's home felt like shattered crystal compared to the smooth, silken texture of windwood that Yuri was accustomed to. He walked the perimeter of the larger room, shuffling slowly after he'd rammed his foot into the stone hearth. A plethora of plush rugs created a patchwork over the floor: beneath the table, in front of the fireplace, and in one corner that had some sort of shrine. Yuri found his armor there, his under layers folded and stowed beside the carefully arranged silver pieces.  He had an urge to take them and run: rush headlong to the stable, to his steed, and back into the sky. 

As if he had any idea how to find the city. 

Instead, he kept up his exploration. He found a bedroll beneath a chair in front of the hearth and realized with heat in his cheeks that Otabek had given up his bed for Yuri, and must have been sleeping in front of the fire at night. The last thing Yuri wanted was to be a burden. 

A fur jacket hung by the door, boots beneath it, and Yuri trudged outside once he’d donned them. They'd gone leftish to get to the stables, and Yuri could see a faint darkening amongst the bright light of the sky. He felt like a fool, puttering around the stable until he found the broad doors, and inside that musty scent tingled his nose again. He groped his way down the hall, discovering it was a far smaller space than he'd imagined. There were only two stalls, and both were empty. 

Yuri clucked his tongue, as if that might make his steed appear, but there was no response, and even the ion scent was absent. 

Had Otabek taken his steed to the village? He wouldn't dare, would he? A pegasus amongst peasants? 

Yuri trudged back towards the house, but the dark blur he thought was Otabek’s home turned out to be a copse of trees. The sun shifted behind a cloud, abruptly enveloping Yuri in deep gray, and the next time he found a brighter patch of light there was no sign of a black smear to indicate home or stable. Yuri swallowed. Tried not to panic. Pulled the jacket tighter around him. A gust of wind blew up around his ankles and under the jacket's bottom, sending Yuri's teeth chattering. 

He couldn't have gone far. He had to be within shouting distance of Otabek's home. If he just stayed where he was, and didn’t make his situation worse, then Otabek would return soon and find him. 

"Hello?!" he tested the power of his voice. It echoed some distance away, but there was no response. Yuri tucked himself against a tree and pulled the jacket around his legs, collecting all his warmth as close as possible. Every few minutes he tried again: "Hello?!" until he grew too cold to even manage that. 

— 

Yuri woke up warm. 

When he tried to sit up, he found a weight around him—an arm, bare, against his own bare skin. 

"You're awake," Otabek said, and the heat left Yuri, chill air creeping in its wake. The feathers of Yuri’s tucked wings fluffed on instinct, trying to separate and keep the warm air trapped in little pockets between them. Yuri could see motion around him, felt a fur settling over his shoulders. 

"You found me," Yuri murmured.

"I live on the edge of a forest. You were just inside, near a meadow," Otabek said. "I took you home." 

“Home,” Yuri echoed. “And why were you…” He made a gesture towards the blur of Otabek. He could make out Otabek’s head separate from his body, his limbs when they moved, but everything was still dotted with black fuzz. 

“What?” Otabek asked. 

“Undressed,” Yuri whispered. 

“It’s best, when one’s cold,” Otabek said. “Forgive me if I made you uncomfortable. Do they not—are you not taught to lay with your horse if you cannot start a fire?”

“Fire? Like what lightning makes?” Yuri asked. 

“Fire…” Otabek paused. “You have fire, where you come from, surely? Do you not bend steel or bake bread or keep warm in the night?”

“You mean sunstones.” The resulting silence made Yuri realize that no, he hadn’t meant sunstones. “…I’ve heard of fire.”

“When your sight improves, I will show you,” Otabek promised. Yuri turned towards the light, which danced and flickered as if the sun was behind a breeze-blown tree. He held his palms towards it, just like he would with sunstones, and idly wished for one to tuck beneath his feet or hold in his lamp. Otabek must have seen him seeking the heat: “Are you warm?”

Yuri was shivering. Not that the fur blanket wasn’t nice. “I’m fine,” he lied. He could sense Otabek next to him, just next to him, also staring towards the hearth. “Did you take my steed into the village?”

“No,” Otabek replied. 

“He wasn’t in the stable.”

“Ah,” Otabek said, realizing that was why Yuri had disappeared. “No.”

“I want to see him again.”

“He was out,” Otabek said. “To pasture. That’s all. I swear on my life he’s alright. You can see when you warm up. Or tomorrow. It’s late, and a storm is coming up the mountain.”

Yuri’s eyes lit up: “A thunderstorm?”

Otabek shook his head. “Snow squall.”

Yuri pouted. There was a small group of three riders with dapple-grey pegasi that herded the snow storms. Not his Bolts. But…

“If my—if my people are there, I should try to return where I came from,” Yuri said. “I might not be able to see, but my steed can, and if the city is nearby—” 

“You want to fly out in the midst of a snowstorm dressed to summon lightning?” Otabek asked. 

“Y— yes,” Yuri said. “I trust my steed.” 

Yuri desperately wished he could see Otabek’s face, read his emotions, anything, but there was only a disquieting silence. Finally: “I can help dress you in your armor. When the storm comes.” 

“Thank you,” Yuri whispered. 

“But first, you must get warm, and you should rest. I will pack provisions. Just in case.”

Again, that irritation, that revulsion, that hatred of being weak enough that someone else had to take care of him. He closed his eyes, bowing his head towards the fire, and tucked the fur tighter about him. “Thank you.” 

— 

“You should sleep,” Otabek said after he’d served another round of soup.

“You’ve been sleeping on the floor,” Yuri said, putting aside his empty bowl. He held his hand up, in front of the fire, separating his fingers to see if he could distinguish them yet or if they were still a flickering blob.

“A bedroll.”

“Sleep in the bed tonight.”

“You need it more.”

“Then sleep beside me,” Yuri said, gathering up his nerve. “You already—when I was cold.” 

He listened to Otabek sip more of his soup. Yuri had almost gotten used to the taste of it. Meaty and sour. “Alright.”

After the dishes were cleaned and set aside, Yuri walked back to the bedroom, shedding the fur blanket as he crawled beneath the sheets, which had gone quite cold. By the time Otabek joined him, Yuri was shivering, and he pressed his back towards Otabek’s heat, his wings tucked tightly so as not to be uncomfortable for Otabek. They lied like that for several long moments; then Otabek shifted, and his arm settled around Yuri’s waist, his chest to Yuri’s wings and back. Otabek wore a nightshirt this time, but the heat transferred through it like it didn’t exist, and Yuri felt something tingling, electric, like he could sense the storm creeping closer.

“What do you look like?” Yuri asked beneath his breath. 

“…My hair is black,” Otabek said. “And short at the sides.” Otabek found Yuri’s hand and brought it up to his scalp, pressing Yuri’s fingers against a velvety texture: short, shaved hair, and as Yuri’s hand went up it encountered longer locks, the individual strands of hair thick and straight, but locks swept messily this way and that. 

“Like a horse’s mane,” Yuri said. It took him another moment to realize he was still touching Otabek, and his hand pulled away like it had been burned.

“I’m not much taller than you,” Otabek said, shortcutting Yuri’s embarrassment. “Black eyes. Thicker nose. Stocky.”

“Stocky like Altin,” Yuri yawned. Otabek went stiff behind him, and Yuri shifted his position, thinking it was some way he’d moved that made Otabek uncomfortable. “The Mastersmith in my city. He taught me how to work leather and metal. I spent years making the bridle for my steed.” Yuri paused. “He seems judgmental and aloof, but he’s a good teacher.” Yuri was more tired than he thought; there was no other way to excuse the rambling. “What do you—“ another yawn “what do you do?”

How was Otabek so warm? Like a sunstone himself. 

“I… take care of this place,” Otabek said. 

“Your home?”

“My village, and the forest,” Otabek said. “And some of the horses.”

“There weren’t any in the stables,” Yuri said. 

“They don’t always like the stables,” Otabek explained. “The pastures go up and down the mountain. Most of the horses have wild streaks in them and would rather stay in the fields and meadows.”

“Is that what my pegasus likes?” Yuri asked. 

“Your pegasus?” Otabek shifted again. “Your pegasus only cares about staying close to you.” 

Yuri was nearly asleep. He knew he should respond, but his silence lasted several long moments. “It took years.”

“What?”

“Finding him. I worked on his bridle for so long, and in the end I didn’t even have it with me when he found me,” Yuri murmured. He closed his eyes—precious little good they were doing him anyway—and settled in to sleep. 

“Perhaps that’s why he came,” Otabek whispered. 

“That’s what—“ Yuri was drifting already, “—Altin said too.”

— 

Without the sun and firelight, Yuri could no longer differentiate anything. His sight showed only unbroken darkness. He would be riding blind, again, just clutching to his steed and hoping that he would bring him home again. Otabek forced him to wear thicker under layers beneath the metallic plate mail; This was far different than spun moonlight or sleep sheep’s wool or dewsilk. Yuri itched and itched with no ability to reach under his plates and scratch. But he couldn’t deny he was warm. Otabek even draped a bandolier of fur over Yuri’s shoulder. 

“Here,” Otabek said, giving Yuri a thick saddlepad. “For your steed.” 

“Do you have a bridle?”

“… your steed won’t wear a bridle,” Otabek replied. “Not even a halter.” 

“How did you bring him in from pasture?”

“He knew.” 

Yuri gave a proud snort. Of course his steed did. For only having ridden him once, the partnership Yuri felt with the pegasus was surreal, as if they had been together since they were young. “Will you put it on him?” Yuri asked. 

“… I have to stay in here,” Otabek said. “When you go outside, call him, and he will come for you. But… we should say our farewells now.”

Yuri found he didn’t like the idea of that. For as much as he resented Otabek’s caretaking, it had given him a certain affinity for the quiet man. “I understand. Thank you, then. I am in your debt. I’ll see no harm ever comes to your home. Not from a thunderstorm, at least.”

Otabek gave an amused snort. “Consider it my duty to assist you, Bolt,” and the words were accompanied by a sudden gust of deathly cold wind as Otabek opened the door. 

“How did you know I was a Bolt?!” Yuri gasped, but the only response was a push out the door and the sound of it slamming behind him. “Steed!” He called into the wind. … He really had to name his mount. 

The pegasus snorted beside his face, suddenly there, with his wings as a shield. “I know,” Yuri whispered, reaching out, feeling the tingle of his steed’s coat. He threw the blanket onto the pegasus’ back and cinched it around his dense ribcage. Then, grabbing a fistful of mane, Yuri’s wings beat to thrust him up onto the pegasus’ back. Yuri felt the crystals of snow pelting his cheeks, and he leaned over to hide his face in the pegasus’ mane, near his ear. “I think I will call you Otabek,” he told the steed, and the pegasus snorted his approval. 

“Okay, then,” Yuri said over the storm winds. “Take us home.”


	8. Hide & Seek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So happy folks are enjoying the story so far ^-^ As per usual, I apologize for the Nanowrimo quality, but hopefully it's an interesting tale all the same.

Of the seven Bolts that herded the Sky Prince’s storms around the world, Jean-Jacques was unquestionably best. He led his team on their raven steeds into the biggest thunderheads, flying circles around coal black clouds pouring their contents onto the world below. Jacques could temper the largest lightning bolts—

“Except for that one last storm,” another Bolt muttered behind him, and that sent off a chorus from the team:

“Yeah, what the heck was that?” 

“How’d you miss that one?”

“What I _meant_!” Jacques cut them off: “Is that if anyone is going after the prince, it should be me. No one has more experience flying. I _am_ the King of Knights, after all.”

“That doesn’t even alliterate,” Minami mumbled to himself. Aloud, he said: “But you don’t even know where all your Bolts are, much less the prince.” 

“What?” Jacques twirled on him and Minami found himself stepping backwards on instinct. 

“Y-you don’t have all your Bolts,” Minami gestured. “There’s only six.”

“You know Yuri doesn’t have a steed yet,” Jacques replied. Minami opened his mouth to say that no, actually, no one had seen Yuri since the storm, but Toph cut in. 

“Jacques, as the best Bolt, you’re most needed here, herding storms,” Toph said. “The rest of you can head out to look for the prince.” 

Jacques looked sullen for only a second that his plan had backfired. 

“They should leave one every two days,” came a sullen voice. Seung Gil wore a ruffled top, sky blue, and high black pants. Everyone turned to look at him, expressions perplexed. Seung Gil sighed: “Based on the speed the city moves and circumference of the globe at this latitude, we circle it roughly every ten days. There are five Bolts besides Jacques that can fly, so to divide the area evenly, they should leave every two days, and always head west. They’ll have twelve days to search, and then we will pick them up again.” He said this all matter-of-factly, and then he turned away from the group, back to the bubble he’d been studying. 

The court stared at Seung Gil’s back.

“Yakov,” Toph said, clearing his throat. “What does the Sky Prince like? What should we look for?” 

Yakov, finding the combined attention of the court suddenly upon him, blustered. "Just about everything. You should go see his contests if you're so inclined. He's done nothing but work on them for the entire week, trying to create something impressive before the damned eclipse.“ 

"Alright," Toph said. He steepled his fingers in front of him, exhaling thoughtfully. "Phichit and I need to stay here and continue watching the dreams. Jacques, you're on storm watch, and the rest of the Bolts need to prepare to go searching. Guang Hong, Laeo, prepare crystals for them. We’ll keep one here, and the Bolts can take the other from the pair, that way they’ll always be able to follow the light to get home. The rest of you... go see what our prince had in store for us." 

"What if he comes back and says we cheated?" Guang Hong mumbled, hiding against Laeo. The two looked like a singular unit in their matching magenta outfits, all frills and lace. They each had a broach at their breast with a crystal in the center, connecting them with a ribbon of light, just like they were about to do for the Bolts.

"Well, it only took him a week to put this together," Toph said. "I'm certain he could do it again."

— 

The court didn't come frequently to the castle, so most heads were turning and eyes agog as they walked upstairs to the grand entryway. Guang Hong stepped carefully around the mosaic of the Sun and Moon, looking up and up and up at the many floors. There had to be over a dozen, all connected and open to the entryway, but a lattice of light stretched across each floor, preventing anyone from flying straight up to cheat. They would have to go up each floor in order. 

"The door's locked," Seung Gil announced, standing by the stairwell. Alright. They would have to go up each floor in order, _if they could_.

"What's this?" Minami asked, gesturing at a golden orb the size of a dream bubble. It had a little indentation on the front, which Minami couldn't resist poking. As his fingertip depressed the button, the golden orb exploded with glitter and a parchment banner unfolded, titled with beautiful script in rainbow ink. 

_CONTEST THE FIRST: HIDE AND SEEK_  
_There are three keys hidden on the first floor: bronze, silver, and gold._  
_Find them to advance!_

Beneath it were three blank lines marked with seals of bronze, silver, and gold — ostensibly to write down the winners.

"I quit," Yakov said. He might have played along if the Sky Prince was still there, but instead he walked out the front entryway, encountering the parked pegasi that had taken to munching on the landscaping. 

The remaining court members looked between each other, and Laeo tugged Guang Hong off, wandering through the vast hall. Thankfully, the entry hall was the only thing on the floor, so their searching space was blissfully limited. Minami flew up to the tops of the pillars that supported the second floor, studying their caps and the metal chandeliers that help up white light crystals. Emil clapped his hand around Mickey's shoulders, taking the opportunity to casually stroll the perimeter with him, much to Mickey's complete and utter dismay.  

"I had to bake thirty dozen cookies for this," Emil said. “Of each kind! Would you believe it? I hope we get to eat them. There are some cinnamon spice ones that you’ll love. I was grinding red crystals for hours!”

For once, Mickey's expression softened a fraction, only to harden again like realizing he'd fallen for a trap: "Assuming we ever even reach them. How are we supposed to find three keys in a space this big?" 

"Well, there's not much here," Emil said. "Sconces, chandeliers, those fancy chairs in the alcoves." 

Georgi had taken roost in one of the chairs, splayed luxuriously and dramatically over its surface with a hand across his forehead. The bundle of dyed phoenix feathers on his hips curled in the air like unfurled ferns. 

“Are you searching, Georgi?” Emil asked. “At least pretend to check the cushions while you lie there.” 

Georgi had thoroughly wilted, even his hand hanging limply from his wrist. “It’s no use,” he monologued. “Our Sky Prince is gone, our court is in shambles, our destiny is behind a locked door!”

“Just search the cushions!” Mickey snapped.

Georgi withered off the chair, but as he did so he took the decorative pillow with him. “Oh,” he said, looking at the bronze key that had been beneath it. “I found it?” Georgi jumped up from his chair, grasping the intricate metal skeleton key and waving it above his head. His perfectly chartreuse wings fanned out to their full span. “I found it!”

With a few scattered cheers and claps, everyone gathered around to inspect the key, and sure enough, it unlocked one of the three deadbolts on the stairwell door. “Only two more!” Minami chortled.

Below ground, Phichit and Toph heard the commotion. “They must have made some progress,” Phichit said. Toph had changed out of his bright yellow garments, back to his white skirt, and was resting in his alcove, though he looked far too pensive to be meditating. Phichit continued: “I don’t like being stuck here while everyone else is working to find him.”

“We’re working to find him, too,” Toph assured. 

Phichit shot a skeptical look. “How?”

Toph gestured to the space around them, to the thousands of bubbles floating up from the clouds, drifting slowly towards the ceiling, growing, shrinking, popping. “We get to see the entire world’s dreams from here. If there’s one thing I’m certain of, our dramatic Sky Prince always leaves an impression. Give it a day. Maybe two. I’m sure he’ll start appearing in people’s dreams.”

And if he did, they could see what else was in those dreams: places, foods, outfits, events. Anything to help narrow down their search. Phichit smirked, crossing his arms. 

“Did you plan that from the very beginning?” Phichit asked. 

“An excuse not to participate in the prince’s wild contest? Me? Never.” Toph flashed a charming, innocent smile as they listened to another ruckus upstairs. “My job is figuring out how to help people, remember?”

— 

Upstairs, Laeo and Guang Hong held up a silver key they’d found resting on the silver frame a painting—the painting of their own color, in fact. The Sky Prince had eleven framed pictures, each an ode to the hues of his court, abstract swatches and blots, all framed in silver and gold. Together, the two magenta representatives clicked the key in its lock, leaving only the golden one to discover. And, just to appease the Sky Prince despite his obvious absence, Emil even inked in the names of the finders on the contest parchment, using the same calligraphic script he employed for his cakes. 

“It’s not here,” Mickey grumbled, arms crossed, some ten minutes later. 

“It’s got to be here,” Emil reassured, swinging his arm around Mickey’s shoulder and earning a cat like squirm from the Lavender Lord. 

“We’ve checked every chair, every cushion, every sconce, every painting, even the loose tile in the mosaic,” Mickey said, gesturing in frustration to the faces of the Sun and Moon below. “There’s nowhere left to look!”

“There’s one more place!” Minami said. He was up amongst the chandelier, his hands weaving between the white crystal pairs and feeling along the golden filigree. “It must be up here! I’m going to find it.”

So, everyone came to the center of the room and watched Minami fly around. With all his pairs of wings, one would have imagined him much more graceful in the air, but he came off as surprisingly uncoordinated and more than once jostled the chandelier to the point everyone backed away, in the event it was about to fall. 

On one such shake, however, a small key no larger than the button of Minami’s nose fell down and clinked on the mosaic tiles, shimmery and gold. 

“Ha ha!” Minami said, rushing down to collect it and shove it in the lock. The door swung open, revealing the richly carpeted steps to the second floor. 

“Aren’t we supposed to be collecting information? What the Sky Prince likes?” Mickey asked, trying again to weasel away from Emil without much success. 

“We learned he likes keys, and locks, and hide and seek,” Minami said, as if it was obvious, and then he was racing up the stairway to the next contest. 

Emil hung back just long enough to write Minami’s name on the banner beside the gold seal. When he finished the ink flashed for a moment, like a thunderstorm was trapped in the black ink. Emil rubbed his eyes, and the ink stayed raven black, perfectly behaved. He kept his eyes on it, suspicious, as he put the quill back in the golden orb and headed upstairs to join the others.


	9. Curiosity & Couples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished the story last night! Now I can finally finally focus on posting. And hopefully doing at least a little bit of editing along the way so it's ever-so-slightly more consistent. Thank you so much all for reading :)

The Katsuki family knelt around a table laden with food cooked by Yuuri’s father: fried sweet fish, chashu ramen, katsudon, pickled vegetables. Everyone stared at the Sky Prince, his robe drooping off one shoulder, an iridescent wing patch just starting to show. He looked dazed and sleepy and like it was something of an effort even to just stay upright, but despite that his expression was pleased and curious. 

“This is your favorite thing to eat?” the Sky Prince asked, gesturing to the katsudon, and Yuuri gave a shy nod. That was the first thing the prince said when he woke up—tell me your favorite food, Yuuri. He’d glanced around the dawn-lit room and smiled when his eyes landed on his host, picking up right where he’d left off before he fell asleep. Minako had been counseling the family about how to handle a sky spirit, and when the prince declared he wanted to try this kingly meal, they leapt into action, putting together the best spread they could offer their surprise guest. 

“It’s called katsudon,” Yuuri said. 

“Katsudon,” the prince repeated. He picked up his chopsticks, tested them, and pulled up a strip of the pork cutlet, drenched in creamy egg and a stray caramelized onion. When he took his first bite his eyes nearly exploded from his face. It was like nothing he’d ever tasted—never mind the fact that he’d only eaten ethereal food from the city before. This was so rich and savory, crunchy but soft, hearty and flavorful and he had no idea how to even process so much new stimulus against his tongue. “Wow!” he exclaimed, then laughed as he swallowed. “Incredible! Do all kings eat this?” 

Yuuri flushed. “It’s… it’s quite common.” Minako eyed him. The Sky Prince could bring tsunamis just as easily as summer breezes; she’d warned Yuuri about upsetting him. 

“Common?” the prince asked. “But you said this was your favorite dish. It tastes truly extraordinary.” 

“My dad’s a very good cook,” Yuuri mumbled. “Prince— err, Sky Prince— err, what— what should we call you?”

“Oh!” the Sky Prince looked like he’d had a revelation. “I have a name! I just remembered! It’s — oh, what is it?” The Sky Prince pouted in thought, drumming his fingers together. “Hmm… Ah-hah! Yes. Yes, I remember now. My name is Victor.” 

Ever since she’d arrived, Minako had been staring at the prince like she’d discovered the world’s greatest treasure, but at this new tidbit of information she couldn’t contain herself any longer. She whipped out a small leaflet of paper and started to jot down notes, recording everything. The Sky Prince, meanwhile, gorged himself on the pork cutlet bowl, occasionally testing the other dishes, until with a whine he put down his chopsticks. 

“Even the air is heavy here,” he said, slumping over. The robe fell off his shoulder, and the wing patch caught the lights in the dining room and twinkled. “How do you manage it?” Minako was inching forward to try and touch the patch, but Mari held her back. 

“It’s always like this,” Yuuri said.

“That must be why you are such a strong king,” the prince said with a nod to himself as his eyes slid closed. The family watched him for a long moment, until it became clear the prince had fallen asleep again. 

“His name is Victor?” Yuuri repeated, surprised, and Minako nearly salivated as she sketched the prince’s sleeping position. 

“No story has ever given the prince a name,” Minako said. “They talk about the other spirits by name. Georgi, Minami, and my favorite, Christopher. But no one ever knew the Sky Prince had a name.” She looked like she was about to burst. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t tell anyone else yet,” Yuuri said. “He fell asleep just from eating katsudon. I don’t know if he can handle… everything else.” 

“I have to get back to work,” Mari said with a shrug, utterly unimpressed with it all. She rose, nudging the Sky Prince with her foot before anyone could stop her, but he didn’t even budge. She gave a snort and headed towards the laundry. Sky Prince or not, it didn’t change her chores for the day. “Well, Yuuri. He’s your problem now.” 

— 

After threatening to kill Yuuri if he didn’t remember every detail, Minako reluctantly returned to her own work as well, leaving Yuuri with a sleeping Sky Prince. He was just pulling a blanket over him when the Sky Prince’s eyes opened again and he sat up, blanket and robe alike falling off of his skin, as if it was simply too smooth a surface for any fabric to catch on.

Yuuri flushed at the sudden urge to touch him.

“Yuuri,” the sky prince said, just picking up where he’d left off once again. “Show me your favorite place to go.” 

“Yes, prince,” Yuuri said with a reflexive bow. 

“Do you not like my name?” the Sky Prince frowned. 

Two sentences without Minako and Yuuri had already offended him. He imagined his entire village being wiped away by a tsunami and quickly waved his hands in denial: “No, no it’s beautiful. Victor. Very beautiful. But a prince deserves a title, honor—”

“You are a king, and I am a prince, so we can call each other by our names,” Victor smiled. “Yuuri.”

Yuuri’s heart hammered in his chest at the way it rolled off Victor’s tongue. “V-Victor.” And saying the prince’s name made him so pleased that Victor’s entire face lit up and he clasped Yuuri’s shoulders. 

“Perfect!” 

— 

They found a padded robe fit to Victor’s size, which Yuuri secured at the neckline with a small brooch before draping a hanten coat overtop of it. 

“It’s very itchy,” the Sky Prince said, though the way he said it hardly sounded like a complaint. More of an observation, as if he was just as fascinated by the idea of itchiness as he was with pork cutlet bowls. “How did you get it over my wings?”

“Wings?” Yuuri repeated, smoothing down the coat before donning his own. “You— you don’t have wings.” 

“What!?” the Sky Prince gasped, looking over his shoulder, undoing all of Yuuri’s work dressing him and even managing to wiggle his head out of the brooched robe. He ran naked down the hall to Yuuri’s room and twisted around to see his back in the mirror, shrieking in dismay. “MY WINGS!” 

Yuuri picked up the trail of clothing that led to his room (why had the prince taken off his socks?) and set them on the bed as he watched Victor twist and turn. 

“My poor, beautiful, glorious wings,” he whimpered, touching the patches where they’d been before. “I’m just like a human!” And he said it with such self pity Yuuri almost got offended.

"I don't know anyone who has hair like yours," Yuuri pointed out. "Even our elders' hair doesn't... glow." 

"MY HAIR!" Victor shrieked, reaching up and clasping at it. "Where did it all go?!" 

Yuuri blinked: "What do you mean?"

"MY HAIR!" Victor repeated, as if that made it apparent. "It's gone!" 

It was not gone. It fell around his ears, with a luxurious sideswept bang that danced in front of his left eye. From the front, he looked the way he normally did with his hair pulled back and tied…only without all of the hair pulled back and tied. 

"How do you do it?" the Sky Prince practically wept, falling to his knees before the mirror. 

"What?"

"BE HUMAN!" 

Yuuri sighed and brought the robe back over to Victor, tugging it over his head and pulling his noodle-limp arms through the sleeves while he sulked. Victor's skin was every bit as soft as Yuuri had imagined, marble cream. "I think it's still very beautiful," Yuuri muttered.

Victor's face lit up again and he forced himself to his feet, grabbing the hanten and pulling it around himself. "I suppose there's nothing to be done about it then. Now, show me this place of yours." And just like that he was ready to leave again, like some invisible light switch had been flicked.

After recovering from the abrupt shift, Yuuri nodded, though it took another five strange minutes of teaching Victor how to walk in shoes beforeYuuri could take him outside. The cherry blossoms were just beginning to bloom, trees everywhere budded in pink, and Victor insisted on studying each one. "Ah, truly this is a most beautiful place. You are a wise king to favor it." 

"Oh, we aren't-- there yet, actually," Yuuri tried to correct him, but the Sky Prince was attempting to climb one of the sakura.

"How do you get up high without wings?" Victor asked, before promptly falling out of the tree and rolling some ways. When he sat up, his hair was a complete wreck, his hanten streaked with dirt. Well. At least no one they saw on the way would think Victor was anything other than a madman. 

"Normally we don't," Yuuri explained, swiping off Victor's clothes as he stood. 

"Oh, look, I've got ink on my elbow," Victor said, pulling up his sleeve and showing off the rainbowy fluid. 

"Ink? No—Victor, you're bleeding," Yuuri said. If someone had asked him what it was like being with the Sky Prince, he never would have imagined the answer being closer to taking care of his friend's triplets than meeting with royalty. Yuuri's mother had packed a bag of snacks, lest either of them get hungry, and Yuuri took out the cloth-wrapped stack of rice cakes. "Let me see it." He shook out the cloth and rolled it into a band, then tied it carefully around Victor's elbow. As he worked, he felt the prince's piercing gaze heating up his cheeks. He glanced up, finally, and found himself speechless under the intensity of Victor's eyes. Yuuri cleared his throat. "Don't you—ever get hurt, where you come from? Haven't you bled before?" 

"Bled?" Victor thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. I think that's something only humans do." 

"Well... be careful then," Yuuri said. "I don't want you to get hurt." 

They continued walking along the river, until they came across a procession, groom leading bride over one of the river's arching bridges. "What are they doing with their fingers?" Victor asked. 

"They're holding hands. It's what couples do." 

"We're a couple," Victor said, and he reached for Yuuri's hand, holding it carefully like he saw in the procession. "There. Now what do we do?"

It took Yuuri a moment to catch up to what had just happened. The gentle heat of Victor's hand radiated against his palm, fingers softer than the silk of his mother's wedding kimono, even dirtied with grit from his sakura-climbing attempts. The Sky Prince was paying such close attention to how he was holding Yuuri's hand, cradling it in curiosity and then studiously watching the wedding procession. He adjusted his hold so he was keeping Yuuri's hand aloft, his thumb coming to rest on the back of Yuuri's knuckles. The immense care alone was enough to make Yuuri’s cheeks red, and the feel of Victor’s skin against his only exacerbated his sudden flush.

“W-well,” Yuuri started. He wanted to tell Victor they weren’t that kind of couple, that they would startle people just walking along hand in hand, or that it wasn’t entirely appropriate. 

But more than that, he wanted Victor to keep holding his hand. 

“Well, now we walk,” Yuuri stuttered, unable to quite meet the Sky Prince’s eyes. 

“I like this place as well,” Victor said, as if the river with its beautiful bridge was the pinnacle of sight-seeing. For Victor, it might well have been. “Especially this grass. It’s so green. It isn’t this green in dreams, you know.” 

Yuuri didn’t know how to respond to that. “Do you… are you in a lot of dreams?” 

“Well, it isn’t my job,” the Sky Prince admitted. “You see, we have dreamkeepers who manage the dreams. They pop nightmares and tell the emissaries when it’s time to shepherd someone. …But I like to peek, sometimes.”

Victor looked almost like he’d done something bad; it was a very cute face. “You aren’t supposed to peek, are you?” Yuuri asked, bemused. 

“Wellllll….” Victor cleared his throat. “I only did it because I needed inspiration for my contest. I wanted to hold a contest for my court, so I could see them. I don’t get to see them often. I need to stay in my castle and take care of the world. But now, I didn’t even get to see them at all.” Victor sighed, and the hand holding Yuuri’s drooped. “And I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents when the eclipse comes. I don’t get to see them very often, and I wanted to do something special.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri responded. “That sounds very lonely.” 

“Yes, but I get letters, and I hear about dreams,” the Sky Prince said. “I get to read about things like family and trade sanctions.”

“But you said you had a family?” Yuuri asked. 

“Well, you know my dad,” Victor gestured up to the sun. “And my mom.” He scanned the sky to see if the moon was visible, but couldn’t find it among the clouds. “But we don’t get to be together very often,” Victor said. He remembered Yuuri’s hand and lifted it back into place again, fingertips curling closer around the lip of Yuuri’s palm. “What’s your family like?”

“My family has run the onsen for seven generations,” Yuuri said. “Baba died last year; you would have liked her. She had hair like yours and she loved katsudon, too. We all work at the onsen and clean the hot springs and kee—”

“Hot spring?” Victor asked. 

“When we get back, I’ll take you,” Yuuri swore. “But for now…” He drew Victor down a side path, through a grove of ancient bamboo and then into a garden walled by younger, tighter stalks. From the entryway, Victor’s eyes caught on the reflection of a wood and gold shrine over a still lake, its edge hemmed in sakura trees. “This is my favorite place,” Yuuri said softly.

The Sky Prince sat on the earth, his legs splayed out in front of him, as if the sight was too grand for him to handle standing. 

“This is where you were,” Victor said. “In your dream. You were here. I thought the pink was just color, but…” He reached out towards some phantasm, as if he could see Yuuri still as he had danced in his subconscious. “You were gliding across the water, like a spirit.” 

Yuuri blushed, standing next to the flopped prince. “I was skating. When the lake freezes over, I like to come here.”

“Skating?” Victor asked. 

“You wear special shoes, with blades on the bottom. Then you can glide over the ice.”

Victor looked perplexed. He’d seen snow and frozen rain and sleet and hail. All of those were ice like. But the lake in the city? Something that vast couldn’t freeze… could it? “It’s solid?” he asked. 

“Mostly,” Yuuri said. “You should test it first.”

“Can we do it?” Victor asked. 

“Go skating?” Yuuri blinked. “No—not, not until next year, when it gets cold enough to freeze again. In the winter.”

Victor frowned. That was a long time. “If I’m still here,” he said instead, “do you promise you’ll go with me?” 

What possible response was there to that? Yuuri looked helplessly down at the Sky Prince, mouth opening and closing, before finally: “Yes. I will. I—”

But an abrupt gust of air took the words from his mouth. Pink petals tore from their limbs and scattered across the lake. The Sky Prince heaved himself up and looked towards the source of the wind, a dark cloud rapidly swallowing the horizon. 

“We should go back,” Yuuri frowned. “This isn’t right.” 

“No,” Victor agreed. “It isn’t.”


	10. Storms & Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's where things get a little bit different.

If someone asked Yuri what happened during the snow storm, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Mostly blind and unbelievably cold, Yuri could do little more than clutch onto his steed’s mane. His moonsilver armor accreted sleet and slowly froze until he could no longer move his limbs; it was a wonder he even stayed mounted. It felt like hours that the storm threw them about, chucking horse and rider up and down so swift and so hard that Yuri—for the first time in his life—was afraid of the weather. He had endured terrifying typhoons, insatiable tornadoes, but this storm felt different, strange, wild. 

“We have to land,” Yuri cried out to his steed, but his words blew right back into his mouth. Whatever attempts he made to call out to the Flakes—the snow equivalent of the Bolts—were likewise ruined by the weather. Yuri tried to urge his steed up, up, up, knowing at some point that they had to break free from the clouds. But the wind followed them wherever they went, grasping at the pegasus’ wings and tail and pulling them down again in vortexes of pressure. Needle-sharp rain clawed at the skin of Yuri’s face, and even if he’d been able to see, he had to close his eyes to protect them.

For Yuri, it was a dark, frozen, vertigo-inducing nightmare, and it ended with a crash through a thin layer of ice and then nothing but frigid white.

—

He woke up warm. 

Something crackled and snapped nearby, and when Yuri blinked his eyes open he could see flickering light—a fire. More than that, there was someone hunched down beside it. 

“Hello?” Yuri asked. 

“You had a rough night.” That voice!

“… Otabek?!” Yuri sat up. His armor was gone, and he was in dry clothes, but the ground beneath him wasn’t wood or stone: it was cold dirt and leaves and twigs. “My steed—” 

“He’ll be fine. He injured his wing. I put a poultice on it.” 

Yuri could almost see him. He could see the shape of his body now: his head, his limbs, his body language. He was tending to the fire with a long stick. 

“Where are we?” 

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? We must be by your home, somewhere in the forest, if my steed found you—…” Yuri stopped as Otabek looked up at him. He could see the tan smear of Otabek’s face, and feel the expression even if he couldn’t see it. “… how did my steed find you?” 

Otabek came over and sat beside Yuri. “Are you warm?” 

“Yes,” Yuri said. 

“Good,” Otabek said. “Your feathers are a mess.” Yuri tucked his wings to his back self-consciously. Then he felt Otabek’s hand on them, carefully moving from feather to feather, preening and straightening them, realigning each one with its neighbors. The gesture made Yuri’s heart beat like he was being chased, but he didn’t want it to stop. 

“You aren’t afraid of me,” Yuri murmured. “You never were.” 

A shrug. “I always felt we had something in common. You never really fit in, did you? You didn’t have a steed, you improved at things none of your peers did. You survived.”

Yuri’s brow knit at the center. That made him sound far more interesting than he really was. He’d lived in the city, where it was ever-peaceful and filled with sun and stars. He just… hadn’t quite felt like he belonged. Not until he got his steed. And that lasted… well. It didn’t. 

“Otabek,” Yuri said, chewing his lip. “How did my horse find you?” 

Otabek blew a breath out of his nose and went back to the fire. Yuri didn’t think he was even going to answer, but finally he said: “My father loved horses. I always had a feel for them.” 

It wasn’t an answer, but Yuri felt he was on the edge of Otabek’s patience—and privacy. And once again, he was indebted to Otabek, had been saved by Otabek. Whatever his steed had done to find him, and wherever they’d wound up, Yuri didn’t doubt he owed his continued survival to the black pegasus and the stony stranger.

Yuri crawled over to sit beside Otabek in front of the fire. “So… we’re lost in the middle of a forest, in the wake of a terrible snow storm, with no idea how to get either of us home?” 

Otabek prodded the fire. “And we hardly have any food.” 

Yuri nodded to himself. “Right.” He swallowed. “If you—if you took my steed, you could ride him and get an idea for where we are. You know the area, don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” Otabek said. “His wing should be well enough to fly.”

“Maybe I can get him to let you ride him,” Yuri suggested. 

“Here,” Otabek said, pushing the stick he’d been using to tend the fire into Yuri’s hand. “You watch the fire. I… can go try.”

“Let me com—” 

“No,” Otabek said. “You have to watch the fire. I can handle this.”

It didn’t feel right, but what could Yuri do? It wasn’t like he could stop Otabek even if he tried. Otabek could just step behind a tree and he’d be as good as vanished. 

“Come back soon,” Yuri said instead. 

Otabek touched Yuri’s wing, then departed. 

— 

Yuri couldn’t tell how much time passed. His eyes grew accustomed to the firelight, unsure if the rest of the world was actually dark or just a trick of adaptation. He jumped at the sound of footsteps crunching through the snow just before he heard Otabek’s voice: “We’re over a hundred miles east of the Ural Mountains.” 

“I thought your village was in the Ural Mountains,” Yuri said in disbelief. 

“It is,” Otabek said. 

“How did _you_ wind up—” 

“Yuri. Please, stop,” Otabek begged. 

“You aren’t telling me something,” Yuri said. “We’re out here together, we’re lost together, you can trust me, Otabek. I know something strange is going on. There’s no way you just ran a hundred miles over the course of a single storm and my steed somehow tracked you down despite not being able to see more than a few feet in front of our faces.” 

After a moment of tension, Otabek let out a breath. “I’ll tell you. I promise. Let’s… there’s a clan set up nearby. Less than an hour’s walk. I’ll carry your armor. Can you walk that far?”

“Yes,” Yuri said, but he wasn’t happy about it. “Then you’ll tell me?”

“Then I’ll tell you.”

It wound up taking them closer to two hours, Yuri needing to stop and recover every ten minutes. He wasn’t used to walking in the cold, or on such hard ground, or through the white mass of accumulated snow that was so much different than cloud. Yuri had never seen anything more than snowflakes thrown this way and that in the stormwinds. The idea that snowflakes could pile up into massive dunes and monstrous swells was simultaneously incredible and frightening. 

But his vision was coming back. He could see more of Otabek. See his eyes, and his nose, and his mouth, make out some of his features and read the expressions where his eyebrows came together or lifted in concern. 

And that meant he could see the complete lack of expression when they approached the camp. “Go on,” Otabek encouraged, hanging back. Yuri meandered between fur covered yurts and around the central fire, in front of old and young alike, in front of horses and perches that held massive eagles. And yet, no one said a word. 

“Hello?” Yuri called to them. One child, very young, turned in his mother’s pouch to look in Yuri’s direction, but even then, he didn’t look at him, but past him. 

Flustered, Yuri came closer, stepping right in front of one of fur-capped strangers. 

And then that stranger walked right through him. 

Yuri choked as it happened, and the stranger shivered, turning to look where he’d come from. He scanned the air, but, seeing nothing, he simply walked on. 

“Oh, no, this can’t—” Yuri stepped backwards and tripped, landing on his ass in the snow in the shadow of one of the yurts. Otabek came over to him, gripped his hand, helped him up. “You’re a citizen,” Yuri said breathlessly. “That’s why you knew about the city, and my steed, and— … who are you?” 

Otabek took Yuri’s hand, placing it on his face. Yuri felt soft fur sprout beneath his fingertips, saw the dark wave of it as it washed over Otabek’s elongating face. He was changing.

“I am Otabek Altin, son of the Mastersmith and the Moon Mare, and I am your steed.”


	11. Mastersmith & Moon Mare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, a little fairytale interlude.

**— A LONG TIME AGO —**

When the Mastersmith was young and the city with him, far fewer citizens soared through the sky. Laeo had not emerged from the cloud, nor Guang Hong hatched from his crystal, nor Michele walked out of the lake after a stray sleep sheep. But the Mastersmith’s job was an ancient one, working for the Sun and Moon to turn their light into liquid metals that could anchor the city’s very foundations.

Back then, the Sky Prince was only a child, laughing as he jumped between clouds with his iridescent wings stretched their full width, delighting in the simple joys of the sky. His keeper, Yakov, tailed the Sky Prince back and forth, from one end of the city to the next, answering the near-constant stream of questions falling from the prince’s lips with a saint’s patience (and the occasional swig of moonshine). 

It was very rare for the Sun and Moon to manifest, but when they did the prince’s eyes would light up and he would clutch to his mother’s moonlight skirts and wail when they had to go again, his sobs so strong they flooded the world below.

Altin would weep as well, but for far different reasons. 

A constant part of Altin’s job was crafting metal shoes for the pegasi that dwelt in the city’s stables. Gold for the prince’s stallion, silver for the Bolts and Flakes, and jewel-encrusted for all the colorful steeds of the court. When the Sun and Moon manifested, they arrived on their own steeds: the Sun Stallion and the Moon Mare. 

And Altin was in love with the Moon Mare. 

She paid no mind to the pastures set aside for steeds, preferring instead to walk along the lake’s edge or move like shadow between the silvery trunks of the windwood forest. One day, she popped her head through the window of the Mirror Forge, studying Altin as he tested a flute he’d just crafted. He felt her eyes on him, magnetic and ensnaring, and then he was in the wood with her, in a dark, shadowed copse he’d never seen, and wondered if the mare had somehow created it by sheer force of presence. Her coat was raven black, so glossy it looked like ripples of moonlight when she moved. Her head was nearly as big as Altin’s chest, pressing to him as he stroked her cheeks, the soft velvet behind her ears, the powerful arch of her neck. 

He’d seen her twice before, always arresting in her stately poise and polished beauty, but this was the first time they touched, the first time he’d been swallowed by her presence. He preened her wings and brushed his hands down her withers and haunch. He combed his fingers through the feathering near her hooves. 

And then she was gone, and it was years before Altin saw her again, before the Sun and Moon returned. He thought of her every day, every night; he kept the silver flute, polished it, turned it into a work of art, and every time he played it a part of him hoped he’d see her head pop through his window. Beneath the stars, he stared at the moon, wondering if the mare could hear him, was thinking of him. 

He crafted the finest shoes he’d ever made, moonsilver pulled only from full moons in the peak of winter, polished with the tears of longing he shed when he thought of her. He wanted something that showed the depth of his adoration, so when the mare returned, she could take a part of him with her.

Years passed and finally they arrived again, the Sun and Moon. Altin, in his great distraction, left open the partition at the forge in his rush to go outside. The mare was there, near instantly, nosing and nuzzling at Altin as he changed her shoes. She led him back to the wood, to the copse, which Altin had never been able to find again without her. She seemed to beckon to him, and Altin, who had thought of nothing but the mare, could only follow.

Back in the forge, the black shadow of the eclipse was magnified a thousand times over by the mirrors, and metal so black it swallowed the light entirely piled up in the chutes and made throbbing ingots. 

When the eclipse ended, the Moon summoned her mare, but was met with only dismay. 

Having just said farewell to her son, the Moon appeared before Altin and the mare. 

“You have anchored my mare to the world; she cannot return to the stars with me,” the Moon said, her voice a thousand voices, memories and echoes of the future, as if even existing in a single time was a struggle, so grand was the Moon’s greatness. “You are banished both until the deed is done.” 

And Altin woke up by an abandoned cottage in the mountains, with the mare in the pasture beside him. They were not in the city. They were not in the sky. But they were not entirely a part of the surface world, either. They lived in between, but happily so, and established a quaint life for the months it took for the mare’s belly to swell and their child to be born. By day, Altin took care of their homestead, and at night, when the mare’s wings blossomed, he played his flute and they shared their time together. 

The colt was raven black, nursed by his mother, growing into a yearling stronger than any of the Bolts current steeds. 

And then the Moon came and said “she has done her duty.” 

No matter how Altin cried or the mare reared, the Moon could not be swayed. She took the mare back to the stars, and Altin was left with a tuft of hair he’d ripped from her mane trying to keep her with him, and a young boy who could shift to his mother’s form at will. Altin taught the boy to survive as best he could, as human and as pegasus, and when the boy could fend for himself, Altin woke up in his bed near the forge: a citizen again, and alone. 

The boy woke up without a father, only the tools to survive in his strange in between: human and citizen, man and beast. His father had told him stories and played him flutesong, but his greatest legacy was a deep-seated longing whenever the boy looked up at the sky. 

Altin awoke heartbroken for the second time in his life, his family shattered. Someone had closed the partition, and the city had gone without its metals for the years of Altin’s absence, but the shadow manifest, the black metal, was nowhere to be found.


	12. Calamity & Confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much everyone for the notes last chapter ^^ I hope it was a satisfying reveal! Now we switch back to poor dear Sky Prince~

The storm in Karatsu lasted for three days, during which the Sky Prince went out to try and dispel it no less than seven. The first time, he came back in with his skin nearly frozen, and Yuuri’s mother dumped him into one of the hot springs—which felt like lava—until he stopped shaking. The next several times he didn’t stay out quite as long, but he still got whipped by a sakura branch and earned a handsome scratch across his cheek that leaked rainbow ink (“blood” Yuuri called it) the same as his elbow had. Dark iridescent micro crystals now covered his elbow, hard and scratchy in a way the prince deplored having as part of his body. 

In the in between, the prince sat with Yuuri and his family and asked a hundred questions about what life was like. He sat in the sheltered hot spring with Yuuri, ate with Yuuri, and even insisted on sleeping in Yuuri’s room, even though they tried every day to get him to transfer to the largest guest room. No matter how many questions the prince asked, Yuuri answered each of them with care and attentiveness. Whether it was about family, or the hot springs, or what it was like not to fly, the prince found all of it fascinating, down to the detail about a stray thread on Yuuri’s robe—the silks in the sky never had such problems. 

Minako, the woman who had looked at the prince so strangely, couldn’t return given the storm, so the onsen stayed quiet, everyone holed up as the snow crept up the side of the building and ice glazed the pink sakura. 

“I would be able to stop it if I were at home,” the Sky Prince frowned, looking out the window. A gust, a breath, it wouldn’t take any effort at all to just tenderly dispel the clouds and even out the air. But here he was helpless, and his attempts to sway the storm even a little had resulted in blood. The Sky Prince didn’t think blood was so bad, but Yuuri had warned him that he could die if he lost too much of it, and now he was paranoid, checking the scratch on his cheek every morning to make sure it hadn’t leaked. 

Just more tiny crystals. 

For Yuuri’s part, he was getting used to finding the Sky Prince wandering around at random times, naked, his robe having slipped off his body and puddled on the floor somewhere with the prince was none the wiser. He once walked into the middle of the dining room, butt bare, and stood arms akimbo as he asked if everyone had tried the king’s katsudon. Luckily, there were only a few guests. Unluckily, every one of them saw every inch of the prince, including the iridescent patches on his back. Yuuri had called it a sickness—clearly the prince was sick, couldn’t they tell by how he was acting?—and ushered the prince back to his room. 

“Victor,” Yuuri tried to impress upon him the importance of wearing clothes. “It’s very strange to people when you don’t wear anything.” The prince looked down, as if realizing only then that he had nothing on him.

Yuuri brought him another robe and carefully wrapped it around Victor’s body, tucking it tightly and tying the obi twice. He found another brooch, which he used to pin the robe where the sides overlapped, so that hopefully it couldn’t unfurl itself or fall to one side, like it seemed so very inclined to do on Victor’s frictionless skin. Then he smoothed his hands down Victor’s shoulders and his front, getting out all of the folds. 

He looked up to find Victor staring. 

“You are a very kind king,” the prince murmured. 

“I promise, I am no king,” Yuuri whispered. 

Victor stared at him, and Yuuri felt the heat rise up to his face, blood pulsing under his skin, turning him red. Victor was so very close to him, leaning towards him, his sky blue eyes like oceans to drown him. Yuuri couldn’t breathe, and Victor came closer still. 

“YUURI!” Mari called, and Yuuri jumped into the air like a startled cat. She appeared in the doorway to Yuuri’s room, leaning, and continued with a knowing smirk: “Dad needs help prepping for dinner.” 

“R-right,” Yuuri said. He knew he wouldn’t be able to look at Victor without flushing again, so he snuck out of his room as quickly as he could, avoiding the prince’s gaze, and went off to help with dinner. 

At dinner Victor was staring, too.

The family always tried to eat together after the guests had been taken care of, and Victor joined them, despite not really feeling hungry himself. He normally snacked throughout the day on whatever he happened to find—though several items, like leaves, Yuuri had warned him were inedible. 

“I am sorry I can’t stop the storm,” Victor apologized, again, as he had every night. Yuuri’s parents were as kind as Yuuri himself, smiling and patting his hand and telling him it wasn’t his fault (though, clearly, it was—who else could control the world’s weather?). 

“Minako was trying to find ways to help you get back home,” Hiroko reassured. “But you can stay here as long as you need.”

Victor smiled: “The king is very lucky to have such kind parents.” The Sun and Moon had both been hidden by the storm. Victor hadn’t seen his parents in days. But then, he hadn’t heard from them in years. 

“Why do you think Yuuri is a king, again?” Mari asked, receiving a powerful look from her father and a blush from Yuuri. 

Victor didn’t mind. “Actually, I think I finally discovered his true identity,” Victor said. “I thought that Yuuri was a king because when I saw how beautiful and colorful and free his dream was, I assumed only a very great man could dream such a thing. But now, I know the truth.” 

Yuuri’s expression sank at those words, prepared to hear Victor say he was just absolutely ordinary. It was bound to happen eventually. Victor could only watch him doing the laundry and sweeping the floor and scrubbing the wash benches so many times before he realized that Yuuri was little more than a servant.

“You must be a magician, Yuuri,” Victor declared, and Yuuri looked up in surprise. Mari, too, set down her drink as Victor continued: “The greatest magician in the world. I haven’t been here long, but already you have made me feel things I never felt before in my life. When I am close to you my heart beats twice as fast, and my chest feels tight and light at the same time, as if I am filled with sunshine itself. My skin cries out to be touched by you and whenever I am not near you I feel your absence like an ache.” 

Yuuri’s family all went silent, speechless, and Yuuri stared straight down into his bowl of katsudon, his cheeks so red it looked nearly unhealthy. 

Victor had expected a different reaction. “… Am I right? I am, aren’t I? That you are a magician?” He looked back and forth between all the Katsukis, then to Yuuri again: “How do you make me feel this way, Yuuri? You must tell me.” 

“Ex-excuse me,” Yuuri whispered to the table. He rose and fled the room. 

Victor watched him go, then looked at the rest of the family. “…Did I offend him?” 

Hiroko pat his hand, “No, Vicchan, not at all. Yuuri needs time to think.”

“About what?” Victor wondered. 

“You said some very nice things to him,” Hiroko said. “Yuuri isn’t used to that.”

“Well,” Victor huffed. “I will just have to say them more often.”

— 

Yuuri slept in a closet. He wasn’t proud of it, but he didn’t know what else to do, and he was certain he couldn’t face the Sky Prince. Not with his heart pounding and his face red and his breath coming short. Every time he thought about it his body crumpled into that jittery state again until he gave up and just hid underneath a pile of blankets in the closet. 

The next morning the storm had ebbed, leaving a white-washed village in its wake. Yuuri assumed anyone who would go out in the snow must be crazy, which… made it not terribly surprising when Minako showed up at the door, having practically tunneled through the white mess to get there. Yuuri pulled her into a side room, carefully avoiding the areas he knew Victor tended to wander. 

He told Minako everything. 

“So… The Sky Prince is in love with you,” Minako said afterwards. “The Sky Prince, the deity in charge of the entire world, saw your dream, got stuck on our side of the divide, and fell in love with you. You. Yuuri Katsuki.”

Yuuri flushed. “He just—he said his heart beat twice as fast.”

“Yuuri. Please.”

Yuuri shuffled, hands between his knees. “What do I do?”

“Well, I have an idea to get him back to the sky, before more of these storms turn everything upside down. Then you’ll be free of him.”

“What?” Yuuri said, a little too quickly. 

“I know how uncomfortable you get when people pay attention to you,” Minako teased, then she took a second look at Yuuri’s face and her eyes widened: “Yuuri. … Are you in love with the Sky Prince, too?” 

Flustered, Yuuri looked away. “I—I just like being near him. He makes me smile, and I feel warm whenever he talks to me, and…” Minako’s withering look pinned Yuuri to the wall. “Yes. I—I like him very much.”

“He has to go back, you know,” Minako said. “You shouldn’t let yourself fall for him. He belongs up there.” Minako pointed up. 

“I know,” Yuuri frowned. “I know. I tried. But then he said that and…” Yuuri closed his eyes with a sigh. “What do I do?”

Minako pulled out an old scroll, opening it to reveal a calligraphic illustration of clouds and radiant gold leaf marking the sun and stars and the halo around a silver-haired man. “I think I know how to get him back. The same way he came here in the first place.”

“What? How?” Yuuri shook his head. He’d just woken up and Victor had been lying there naked on his floor.

“You have to dream about him.”

— 

Yuuri had no idea what to do or how to will himself to dream of Victor. He’d been dreaming about the ice, about gliding over the frozen surface of the lake and dancing with color itself. Though… if Minako had made it all the way to the onsen, then perhaps… 

In all of his layers, Yuuri looked like a plush round creature, coats over robes over underthings with a big bag over his shoulder. He went out into the white, doing his best to navigate by the tree tops and building roofs still visible above the snowline, which came easily to Yuuri’s waist. Some of it had been cleared, or blown into dunes, but it was still a mess anywhere besides the main streets. 

At the lake, the few remaining sakura blossoms glistened in ice, and the shrine’s golden gleam was hidden beneath a mantle of snow. But what Yuuri really cared about was the lake, which had been blown clean by the wind. Approaching the edge, Yuuri tested the ice’s thickness. The storm had been monstrous: the ice went down past the point that Yuuri could even gauge it. 

Yuuri pushed the snow off a nearby rock and sat down to put on his skates, tucking the leather boots over his socks and then lacing them tightly. The blades gleamed as he stepped onto the ice, and even with the first stroke he felt all of his nervousness falling away, like snow slipping off a roof. On the ice, none of those emotions mattered. Yuuri could simply glide around the perimeter of the lake, the lingering wind rasping against his cheeks and the boots clutching onto his ankles. 

He didn’t notice that he’d been followed. He didn’t see the Sky Prince sitting on the edge of the lake, staring in awe and wonder as Yuuri danced the best way he knew how. Everything Minako had taught him about how to move he applied a thousand times over on the ice, performing for no one at all, performing just for the sheer joy of it. 

Victor watched, diamond tears at his eyes, wondering how, for all the surreal beauty of the city, the most perfect thing he’d ever seen was right here on the surface.


	13. Books & Boredom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upgraded the rating of the work to Teen, because at some point the Sky Prince was bound to notice.
> 
> ((And sorry for the posting delay! Post-holiday catch up on everything))

Half the rainbow court congregated on the thirteenth floor of the castle, having surpassed the twelve prior challenges. This would have been an impressive accomplishment, if it hadn’t taken them a week.

While the court had been figuring out singing-bowl songs and which numbers the Sky Prince considered the prettiest (11, 70, and 352 apparently), the Bolts had been departing every other day with what they knew, which could be increasingly summarized as “the prince has a vast and disconnected array of interests, and seems generally fascinated by anything he comes across”. Jacques tried to keep up his team’s morale, but it was starting to feel like hunting a needle in a haystack. 

Emil snored in one of the plush embroidered chairs in the library. The golden orb had popped open to reveal a contest on literature, with virtually no other instructions save for three platters: gold, silver, and bronze. Each floated on its own small cloud, at different heights, waiting for… a book, presumably?

“I don’t remember this floor from before,” Mickey said, arms crossed as he peered at row after row of books. It was a rarity to go to the castle, but over the years they’d each garnered some familiarity with it. 

“It’s new,” Minami said. “Three years ago, Toph sent the prince a message that described a dream with a library. The prince wanted to know more about what a library was like, and Toph said it was a space filled with organized books in all lengths and genres.”

“…. Do you read our messages?!” Laeo squeaked in alarm. 

Minami froze, mid-reach for a book, and blushed sheepish: “Only some of them. Not yours and Guang Hong’s!” 

“What about mine!?” Georgi gasped. 

“What? No,” Minami made a face of disgust. 

And Georgi gasped again, though that time in offense. “How dare you!” 

“How dare I not read your messages?!” Minami huffed in confusion. 

“Yes! Are mine not good enough for you? Are you looking for finer literature? Since when do you have the eye to critique the written word?” Georgi went off. “Clearly you can’t tell the difference between—”

“Look at this,” Laeo interrupted, coming towards the central area where Emil was still happily snoring. “Every single book is written in rainbow ink, in the same handwriting, and with the prince’s crest on the title page. I— I think the prince wrote every book in this library?”

“There’s no way; he only started three years ago,” Mickey said, pulling book after book from the shelf and opening it just long enough to see the rainbow ink before shutting it again. “That’s impossible.”

Minami flipped through a few of the books. “These are all based on dreams. I remember this one. He took all the dreams Toph told him about and turned them into full stories.” Minami’s eyes widened as he looked around the library, a cavern lined with books from floor to ceiling and each of them based on one or two sentences from Toph describing a dream. 

Emil had woken up during the commotion and with a yawn looked around at everyone ravenously hunting through the bookshelves, jewel-tone covers with gold filigree piling up on the tables. 

“What’s going on?” Emil asked. 

“We think the prince wrote every book in the library,” Laeo explained. “They’ve all got rainbow ink.”

Emil looked down at the book he’d been reading, having fallen asleep with it splayed on his chest. “Uh… not this one,” he said. The words on the page were deep black and blotted, scratched in a furious hand. 

“… Where did you find that?” Laeo asked as he approached. 

“It was wedged in the cushion,” Emil said. “I thought the prince had fallen asleep reading it. Maybe it was one of his favorites?” 

“Does it go on the platters?” Laeo asked. 

“Wait, then who wrote that book then?” Minami followed.

“What’s it about?” 

Emil should have stayed asleep. He lobbed the book to Minami, who caught it in midair and flipped through it, all of his little wings beating rapidly to keep him in midair. The red dye had mostly faded off his feathers, though it had remarkable staying power in his hair. 

“… Did you read any of this?” Minami asked Emil. 

He looked sheepish. Mostly he’d been pretending to read as he fell asleep, and from time to time watching Mickey as he studied the shelves. “Er… is it good?”

Minami had a deep frown on his face as he read:

“Beyond light and shadow is nothing, absence of all, the heart of chaos. Beyond light and shadow is nothing, null and void, eradication of existence. Void. Void. All shadows need light, all light casts shadow, and in the void is nothing, nothing, nothing. Chaos will destroy the shadow. Chaos will consume the light. Chaos will send it all to nothing, and Void will reign again.”

Minami dropped the book, his hands shaking too much to continue. The entire court was staring at him, while he stared at his hands, as if they’d been burned or tainted just by touching the tome. 

“I… don’t think that’s part of the contest,” Emil whispered. 

“It’s not,” came Seung Gil’s rare and sullen face. He was kneeling next to Emil’s chair, studying drops of jet colored ink so black they didn’t even have gloss. There were drips, like from a leaking fountain pen, that led away from the chair, and underneath the door to the fourteenth floor, currently locked, its tumblers attached to the suspended platters that the court had no idea how to solve. 

Seung Gil turned to look at the rest of the court. “This isn’t a game. Something is very wrong in the city.” 

— 

In the Dreamery, Toph walked alongside Phichit, each scanning a different side of the bubbles, looking for any sign of their odd and quirky leader. They’d had some luck: a few glimpses of glowing silver hair and a very naked Sky Prince, but they all took place in slim halls, with beige mats, which could have been a variety of locations. And, of course, the prince only existed for brief flashes; none of the people who dreamed about him had actually come into sustained contact. 

Toph paused, and Phichit looked over his shoulder, finding one of the dreams that always made Phichit blush. 

“Now really isn’t the time for that, is it?” Phichit coughed. Phichit knew that Toph went into many different kinds of dreams, the good, the bad, and the… well… those. But it was still strange to see Toph looking at the intimacy inside the bubble with the same sort of scholarly detachment he studied a nightmare to analyze how best he could defuse it. “… Toph?”

“Look,” Toph said. He was already taking the moonsilver hoop from Phichit and catching the bubble, carrying it towards the trough of dream draught. 

“What?” Phichit couldn’t quite see what was happening with how quickly Toph was moving, but once the dream draught coating solidified the bubble, Phichit finally caught a glimpse of glowing silver hair, and a very naked man who looked very much like the Sky Prince — at least for a moment, though he then quickly morphed into someone entirely different, and the bubble quivered, as if the dreamer was trying to wake up. 

“No time,” Toph said, and he pressed his face to the bubble and warped inside. 

— 

Yuuri didn’t normally have dreams like this, but Victor had been so naked, so many times, and hardly confined to the hot springs where that was intended behavior and not a side effect. And then, after he’d skated, Victor had been so close to him, practically buzzing with energy that had no outlet. Yuuri had wanted to kiss him, with all the ache in his heart he’d wanted to kiss him, but instead, at the end of it, Victor did the one thing he knew how to do:

He took Yuuri’s hand, and he led him back to the onsen. 

Yuuri couldn’t dislodge Victor from his head after that, but he still hadn’t expected this sort of dream. A dream where Victor’s hands were running down his bare sides, where Victor’s lips were against his, finally, and then deeper, finally. Yuuri’s hands clutched into Victor’s hair—

And then it wasn’t Victor anymore. Yuuri startled, pulling back from his grandma, who was absolutely infuriated that Yuuri had been behaving with such impropriety in her home. He’d been caught, and now he shriveled. The embarrassment was so strong all Yuuri wanted to do was wake up. 

That was when he realized he was dreaming. That… hadn’t ever happened before. Or if it did, it always resulted in Yuuri waking up immediately. But he didn’t. His grandma disappeared, but he was still in her room of the onsen. He looked down at his hands, trying to will Victor back, but shame kept creeping up onto his face. That wasn’t right, was it? 

But a spirit popped into existence all the same, though this one had vast wings that were pure white and covered in elegant feathers, unlike Victor’s translucent, iridescent wings. He was missing the silver hair, too. This spirit’s blond curls faded to brown above his ears.

“You’re not Victor,” Yuuri said. 

“My name is Christopher,” the spirit introduced. “I saw your dream.” 

Yuuri turned beet red. “Please, please forgive me. I would never—” But the angel was laughing with such sympathy Yuuri stopped mid-sentence. 

“Everyone dreams,” Christopher said. “The man you dreamt about, the man with silver hair…”

“Victor. The— the Sky Prince,” Yuuri said. 

“Yes!” Christopher said, his enthusiasm barely contained. “Yes, the Sky Prince. We must return him to the sky. Please, where are you? Where is he?”

“W-we live in Karatsu, in Kyushu, Japan,” Yuuri said. “My family runs Yu-topia onsen.”

“Karatsu, Kyushu, Japan,” Christopher repeated. “Thank you. Please keep him safe.”

“Oh… he’s hurt himself a lot already,” Yuuri flushed. “He keeps trying to climb things, or fly, but he doesn’t have wings anymore. In my world. …How is he going to get back to you?”

“We… don’t know yet,” Christopher admitted.

The dream flickered, and Christopher heard Victor’s booming voice: “Yuuri! Wake up!”

In a flash, Toph backed out from the dream, lifting it from the draught, and it immediately popped. 

“I found him,” Toph said. 

— 

Yuuri jerked awake to find Victor on top of him, his robe doing everything in its power to slide off Victor’s body. The obi had come undone, and it was only the brooch at his breast keeping the robe looped around his neck, more like a cloak now than any sort of robe. Victor was straddling Yuuri, gazing down at him with bright happy eyes. 

“You have an affliction,” Victor said. “I think you might be sick. Look.” 

Victor pointed down Yuuri’s far-more-clothed body to the crux of his legs, and Yuuri forgot about his dream entirely in favor of wishing he could sink into the ground and die. 

“It’s nothing!” Yuuri said, but when he tried to push at Victor’s body to dislodge him, he found the Sky Prince rather firmly in place. Yuuri squirmed underneath him, and Victor looked down with a frown at his own body. 

“Oh, no,” Victor said. “The disease is contagious.” Only Victor’s rainbow blood made his version rather more surreal. “What do we do? Will we die?” 

“What?! No!” Yuuri said quickly. “No. It’s natural. It’s normal. It happens to men. It goes away if you just— NO DON’T TOUCH IT!” 

Yuuri gasped, his whole body arching beneath Victor’s sudden touch. His fingers clasped around Victor’s wrist, intending to push his hand away, but when it came to it he couldn’t manage. His hand stayed anchored there, his face flush as Victor felt him like some sort of curious scholar intent on studying a new specimen. 

“Victor,” Yuuri whispered breathlessly. 

“Does it hurt?” Victor asked. 

“N-no,” Yuuri said, his brow knitting up tight at just how incredibly good it felt. His next inhale came out strangled, more of a gasp, as the pleasure swelled and a wet mark bloomed on his underwear. 

“Oh no!” Victor pulled his hand away. “I made you bleed!” And then, terrified: “Are you going to die? Oh, please don’t die, Yuuri.”

Yuuri shivered, little aftershocks rocking his hips, and his shame came back tenfold. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he whispered. “It’s normal. That’s what happens.”

"Will mine bleed too?" Victor asked. He touched it, then pulled back at the feeling, then touched it again. "Why is it so funny?"

Yuuri did NOT anticipate having to have this discussion with anyone. At all. For at least twenty years. Was it even proper to teach a spirit these things? Was it impure? There had to be spirits in charge of this sort of thing... right? It shouldn't come down to Yuuri to explain—well, all of this. 

"It’s—it's how—it—“ Yuuri stuttered. 

"Are you okay? Did the sickness affect you?" Victor said in concern. He crawled up Yuuri until he was straddling his chest, touching Yuri's face. "You don't look well."

"Please get off me," Yuuri whispered. "I can't breathe."

Victor looked down, then up, then slid to the side of Yuuri, kneeling. Yuuri got out of bed, going to his dresser and changing. He'd given up attempting to make Victor understand why he liked being alone to change. He cleaned himself with a small kerchief, then pulled on a new pair of underwear before returning to the bed. 

"It feels good because it's what our bodies are supposed to do. To create children. Usually a man and a woman touch, and what comes out isn't blood, it's what makes a baby inside a woman," Yuuri explained. 

Victor thought about this, then nodded in understanding, "So, if a woman eats this, she will defecate a child." 

Yuuri stared at Victor for several seconds. ".... almost?" 

Victor tapped his finger to his chin, "so it feels good because it's creating a family. What about if you ate mine?" 

"If I ate your—? You mean,—you mean could I have your baby?"

"Yes!" Victor's eyes widened in enthusiasm. "Would you, Yuuri? We could have a family!"

Yuuri stuttered. "Men can’t—only a man and a woman can make a baby."

"Well that's not very fair," Victor huffed. "The wind and the rain made the pegasus. The mist made the sprites. Are you certain about this? I think you might be mistaken."

"Maybe it's different where you come from," Yuuri admitted. Maybe in Victor's world people really could just eat something and have a baby pop out. 

"I should ask," Victor said. "When I get back." Victor considered it, his head tipped to the side, and Yuuri remembered his dream. But before he could open his mouth, Victor cut in: "I'd like to make a family with you, Yuuri. I could be your Sun. Or your Moon. I'm not sure which you'd like."

"I saw a spirit in my dream," Yuuri said, because he had no idea how to respond to Victor. "Christopher. He's looking for you."

"Toph!" Victor got up and grasped Yuuri's hand. "Is he alright?"

"Just worried about you," Yuuri said. At last Victor's condition had... ebbed. Yuuri could look at him without being extraordinarily distracted by a vaguely rainbow protrusion. He retold his dream to Victor's curious face, and then Victor, instead of being happy like Yuuri imagined he would be, frowned. 

"What about you?" Victor asked. 

"I don't think I'll be much help getting you back," Yuuri admitted. "I don't know—“ 

"No," Victor shook his head. "I mean..."  Victor lifted up Yuuri's hand, so he was holding it just like the wedding couple. He touched the top delicately with his other hand, making a blanket of it over Yuuri's knuckles. "I feel so many things with you. I don't want to stop feeling them."

Yuuri looked down at their joined hands, and when he listened to his heart he felt that familiar sputter, that thrilled tightness. Victor wasn't alone in his feelings. A week ago felt like another lifetime, his existence divided sharply into the time before and after the Sky Prince fell from above. 

"I don't either," Yuuri whispered. 


	14. Home & Roles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, back to more Otayuri :D Lots of answers this chapter~~

In the days since Otabek revealed his truth, Yuri had struggled to understand it. Otabek was the son of the Mastersmith and the Moon Mare. He could alter his form to reflect either his father or his mother, be human or pegasus, and he'd spent most of his life alone, apart from everyone else, until a song from his childhood had made him soar up into the sky and discover Yuri. In that instant, Otabek said, he felt purpose for the first time in his life. He'd taken Yuri, once he was blinded, to the only place Otabek knew: the home he'd stayed at, high in the mountains. He'd turned back into his human form, taken care of Yuri as best he could, but he'd never known how to explain the truth. 

The pair had flown west whenever the sky allowed it. The first time Yuri climbed onto Otabek's back, knowing what he was, felt entirely different. Those muscles moving beneath him belonged to Otabek, the wings shielding him from the wind belonged to Otabek. The thick mane in his fingers belonged to Otabek. It didn't feel right to ride him, and yet, Otabek insisted, feeling Yuri on his back was the first time Otabek knew what he needed to do in the world. He said it was like finding himself. Finding a reason, finally, that thing his soul had always been waiting for. 

At night, when it was too cold, Otabek stayed as a pegasus, and Yuri curled up against his side, tucked under one of his jet black wings like a blanket. He'd felt a sense of purpose, too, when Otabek found him. For years he'd not been his whole self, denied the ability to ride into the storms with the rest of his team. The feathers on his little wings matched Otabek's, distinguishable only by size. They were a matched set. 

"Is that why you didn't want a bridle?" Yuri asked, sitting in front of the fire. Otabek could make it with his hooves alone, crunching twigs and then creating little bursts of lightning that eventually caught and crackled. Yuri would have to learn how to do that with his boots. 

"It feels off," Otabek responded.

“I spent years working on it,” Yuri said. “We can at least hang it up by your stall.”

“Stall?” Otabek raised his brow. 

“There’s an empty one. For my steed. Always has been,” Yuri said. And when Otabek kept staring at him: “You don’t have to stay there, obviously. Seung Gil is an architect, and an inventor. He can make a house for you.”

Otabek stoked the fire, gazing at the mesmerizing flames. He asked questions about the city until he heard Yuri’s voice quiver with cold, then took on his pegasus form and sheltered his rider. 

They’d only been in the air an hour the next day when they saw a small dark storm cloud, moving with curious speed mismatched to the wind. The closer they got, the more Yuri could feel the tingle of ions and electricity. 

“Let’s go in,” Yuri said, bending low to put his lips near Otabek’s ear. He was still in his armor, which started to crackle and spark as they enveloped themselves in the nimbus. They moved quickly through the murk, quickly enough, in fact, that they nearly ran headlong into the Bolt herding the storm. 

“Yuri!?” the Bolt asked, lifting the face plate of his helmet to stare. 

“Where’s the city? I need to get home,” Yuri said. 

“It’s still days away,” the Bolt replied. 

“… Then what are you doing out here?”

“It’s a long story. And where have you been? When did you get a steed?”

“That’s a long story, too.”

— 

After a few hours around a fire, both sides were caught up and both sides were stunned. Otabek transformed from pegasus back to human, and the other pegasus threw back its ears in alarm and reared before Otabek waved a single soothing hand and everything calmed. The Sky Prince was somewhere on the surface of the world—not ephemeral like Yuri, not a spirit amongst humans, but brought into the human world via a dream, whatever that entailed. The entire city was looking for him. The Bolts had been sent out across the world, the court was looking for clues, and in the mean time the weather of the world was self-destructing: unseasonable snow storms, roaring hurricanes, tornados in the middle of summer. 

“We should split up, then,” Yuri said. “Cover more ground. And we’ll come back to the jetstream when the city’s supposed to arrive.” Was Yuri moderately angry that the Bolt he assumed had come looking for him was in fact out looking the for the Sky Prince and hadn’t even really known Yuri was missing? Absolutely. And he was going to stew on it and radiate sparks for the next day and a half thinking about it. 

Or that was the plan, until he and Otabek landed for the evening and Otabek’s wing wrapped over him like a blanket and no matter how hard he tried, Yuri couldn’t find a way to stay angry. All of that just seeped out of him, Otabek’s grounding touch canceling out his sparks and letting off all of that spare energy. 

They flew against the jet stream during the day, never quite sure exactly what they were looking for. Panic? Worship? But they were in the middle of nowhere, in a stretch of tundra populated predominantly by nomadic tribes and clusters of herders. They took brief rests at night, and by the third day Yuri realized the scent in the air was familiar. “The city. It’s close.”

Seeing the city from a distance was like catching a glimpse of a rainbow crystal, the castle in all of its colorful glory acting as centerpiece to the scattering of single-tone buildings around it. The lake glittered under the sunlight and Yuri couldn’t help squeezing his thighs to urge Otabek faster towards their destination. Home. Finally, finally home. 

JJ met him at the stables, wide-eyed with surprise. Otabek kept to his pegasus form as Yuri explained everything, again, and then it was JJ’s turn to add the latest details since they’d dropped off the Bolt over a week ago. 

“He’s somewhere called ‘Japan’, so we just have to find it,” JJ said. “No one’s ever heard of it.”

That was when Otabek switched to a human. JJ screamed, and Otabek ignored him. 

“I’ve heard of it,” Otabek said. “I know where it is. We’re going the right way.”

JJ stared, and when he finally accepted what was in front of him for what it was, he gestured towards the stables. “Get a pack made then. And go to the castle to get a crystal from Laeo and Guang Hong. You really know where it is?” JJ asked Otabek.

Otabek gave a solemn nod. 

“Alright. Then you’re leading the charge.” 

— 

Yuri got out of his armor and they grabbed one of the travel packs from the stable. Otabek settled the pack on his back for now, and then they headed towards the castle.

“Why are you walking like that?” Yuri asked. 

“It’s… the cloud moves under you,” Otabek frowned. 

Right. Otabek hadn’t actually been in the city before. 

The castle looked like a carnival gone awry, floors of ribbons and jumping pads and singing bowls and finally they found the court, near the seventeenth floor, trying to put ten thousand light crystals in rainbow order. 

“Yuri!” Minami exclaimed. “And someone new! Did you come out of the lake? Were you born from a crystal? Did the storm zap you into existence?”

“Minami, this is Otabek Altin, the Mastersmith’s son,” Yuri introduced. 

“Oh! Have you been hiding this whole time?”

“It’s a long story,” Yuri said. “We need a paired crystal. We’re going to find the Sky Prince.”

“He’s in Japan!” Minami chirped. 

“Yes, we know,” Yuri said. “What are you all doing?”

“We believe a dark force has taken advantage of the prince’s absence to invade the castle and bring chaos to the world’s weather,” Seung Gil explained with his usual succinctness. 

“Oh…” Yuri blinked a few times. That wasn’t good. “…So. We should go.”

“Yes, here,” Laeo said, pulling a crystal pair from his pocket, a bright sunshine yellow. He handed one to Yuri, and the other he brought downstairs with them, to the mosaic, placing it in the center with the other five. It created a tether of light to Yuri, anchoring him, at least visually, to the city. No matter how much distance between paired crystals, they’d always stay connected by their string of light. “There. Now you can always get home.” 

— 

“Hold on,” Otabek said.

Yuri stopped outside the door to his house. It was a deep blue color, like the smear of sky through a stormcloud's rain. The pearl koi scales that shingled the roof were speckled with darker iridescent shingles: from the belly of the dragon that had lived, allegedly, long long ago. It was barely more than a single room, at least above the cloud, though he had access to a tunnel into the cloud and a living space he'd made within. 

"What is it?" Yuri asked, hand on the moonsilver doorknob. 

“There’s one more thing I have to do,” Otabek said. He let out a breath and looked out across the city. “Where is the Mastersmith?"

\--

Yuri walked Otabek to the Mirror Forge, its many mirrors sparkling like a second sun. "This is the forge. You could... you could see the bridle I made for you, if you want." Yuri flushed. He felt silly now, making a bridle for a human. 

Otabek looked down at Yuri without saying a word, then back at the forge, his mouth pursed and set. He stepped forward into the sturdy building while Yuri waited outside, soaking in the sunlight that—for a brief moment—wasn't accompanied by ice cold winds and freezing rain. He was about to sit on the cloud when Otabek came back outside. 

"That was quick," Yuri frowned. 

"He's not there." 

"The stables, maybe..." Yuri said, though Altin usually did all his work at the stables in the morning. 

"Is this it?" Otabek asked, pulling out Yuri's bridle from behind his back. Yuri flushed again. 

"Yeah." 

Yuri suddenly couldn't bear to see Otabek's reaction. It felt like such a foolish thing, this amalgamation of leather and metal that he'd spent so much time on. He started to walk back towards the stables before Otabek could say anything; he just heard Otabek fall into step beside him. 

"It's beautiful," Otabek said. "The filigree, the inlays, the sewing, even the buckles are perfectly smooth." 

The heat traveled all the way to the very tips of Yuri's ears, burning there. "I'll make you something different. Something you could use. A bracelet? Or, or a necklace, if you want. A belt?" 

Otabek's face twitched, corner of his lips tucking up, and he shook his head. "Why don't you try putting this on me, next time we fly out. Just... just to see." 

"Are you sure?" Yuri twisted to look at him. Otabek was running his thumb over the leather, the same way Yuri had always worried it while he was thinking. 

“You put so much care into it. I want to try." Otabek offered the bridle back to Yuri, and Yuri put it over his shoulder with the provisions pack. For some reason, the idea of it still made his cheeks rosy. Or maybe it was a different kind of heat. 

At the stable, Yuri tracked down Jacques and asked if he'd seen the Mastersmith, but Jacques couldn't remember seeing him that day, nor the one before, when he thought about it. "I know he was there when the court said they'd found black blots in the castle," Jacques said. "Minami announced it to the whole city and asked if anyone had seen anything similar."

"Thanks," Yuri said. They returned to the stables, Yuri hanging the bridle at the stall that was set aside for Otabek. There was a saddle as well, which Otabek studied, hands running over the material. 

"Where does the leather come from?" Otabek asked. "On the surface it’s skin."

Yuri looked confused. "Ours is skin, too. The mammatus mammoth sheds it." 

“Sheds?” Otabek snorted. "It's not shed on the surface." Then, brow pinched: "Where does a mammoth live on the clouds?"

Yuri shrugged. "No one's ever seen it. We just find its skin and its tusks and its fur. ... it sheds a lot. Minami thinks there must be a dozen of them." 

Otabek's lips quirked up again and he shook his head. "This place is strange." 

"The surface is strange," Yuri shot back, but it was with a smile. "... let me show you my home? I'm tired." And besides, Otabek had said they were still at least a day away from Japan, based on how the city was moving. 

“Okay,” Otabek agreed. “Show me." 

— 

Yuri had been in Otabek’s home, in Otabek’s bed, and yet he felt deeply self conscious as he opened the door and let Otabek into his space. Yuri’s wings tucked tight against his back, not wanting their nervous flutter to give his emotions away. It was messy. There were leatherworking tools on the table and baking flower near the stove from Yuri’s attempts to make honey-drizzle fried dough. He had a pile of clothes in one corner that he hadn’t sent through the cloud vortex and the warm wool sheets hung off the unmade bed. Yuri coughed and tried to tidy up, tucking in the sheets and kicking the clothing pile into a more orderly heap and—

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Otabek reassured. “It feels lived in. Like a home.” Otabek touched the tools, then studied the dried fruits hanging from the ceiling and opened the small pantry to see Yuri’s paltry stock of jams and pickled things. 

“Are you hungry? You can have anything,” Yuri said. “How did you— if we couldn’t touch anything, how did you eat?” 

“I was born on the surface. I’m less of the city than you. And less transparent to the rest of the world.”

“But… those people didn’t respond to you, at the camp, either,” Yuri said. 

“It’s… something I can control,” Otabek said. “Going from horse to human isn’t entirely one or the other. Like, right now, if I went wholly human, I would just… fall through the cloud.” 

“Well don’t do that,” Yuri made a face. He sat at his table, then realized there was only one chair and sat on the edge of the bed instead. “I— I should get another chair. I’ll get one. And the bed— it’s not very big. I can— I can see if we can get a bigger one. If you want to—“ Oh, no. Yuri didn’t even know if Otabek actually wanted to stay with him. He’d just assumed, they’d been together since they met, and— 

“I want to stay with you,” Otabek said. 

As quickly as the embarrassment came, it vanished, replaced with an atypical burst of elation. “Okay, then you have to see my secret space.” Yuri lifted up the lone rug in the middle of the room to reveal a windwood trap door, and within that a ladder down into the cloud. Otabek raised his brow, but Yuri just gave a mischievous grin, kicked off his boots, and descended. 

His little cavern within the cloud was no bigger than his home above, but covered in blankets, with a small shelf of books and metal puzzles that Seung Gil and Altin had made. Above, the ceiling was cross-hatched with purple light crystals, creating a soft indigo setting. A few pieces of parchment were pressed on the wall, showing black pegasi and armored Bolts. 

“I used to come here after the storms,” Yuri said. He approached a hanging glass chamber and snapped his fingers, creating a small spark of lightning that got caught in the glass and lit it up like a small sun, balancing out the dark indigo. “I hated knowing everyone else was out there doing their jobs and I was helpless. I waited for my steed during the storm, in the pastures, with my oats and—“ Yuri gave a snort “—and my bridle. And then when the storm let up and it was clear I’d missed my chance, I’d come down here. Take my mind off things.” 

He flopped into the blankets and grabbed one of the puzzles, tossing it to Otabek. 

Otabek was staring at the bulb Yuri had turned on. “Where’d you get this?” 

“Huh? I made it,” Yuri said. “I had a lot of spare time to play with lightning.”

“Have you shown this to anyone?”

“What, and get laughed out of the room?” Yuri scoffed. “It’s not my job. I’m a Bolt. I shepherd the storms. Seung Gil’s the architect and inventor. Guang Hong and Leo make the light crystals.”

Otabek finally looked at the puzzle in his hands, sitting beside Yuri. Two metal horseshoes were connected at either end by a short chain, and looped around those chains was another metal hoop, obviously too small to get around the horseshoes. “You have to get the hoop off of it,” Yuri explained. 

“That’s impossible,” Otabek said. 

“Nope.” 

Otabek eyed Yuri, and Yuri gestured to his heart: “Promise. I’ve done it.” 

With a purse of his lips, Otabek studied the puzzle, tugging on the horseshoes, then folding them side by side, pulling the hoop towards one or the other. Yuri expected him to get frustrated, to give up, but Otabek just settled into the blankets and kept at it, experimenting on the puzzle with a methodical, steady approach. Yuri took one of the puzzles he hadn’t solved yet and tried it, then got hungry and went upstairs to get food for both of them. Nearly two hours had passed by the time Otabek finally twisted the horseshoes in opposition, folded them, and released the hoop. 

“I did it,” he said, almost in surprise. 

Yuri stared. It had taken him months to solve that puzzle. “How did you do that?”

Otabek shrugged. “You just keep trying different things.”

“Alright,” Yuri said, handing over the other puzzle. “Show me on this one.” Otabek looked over at Yuri, who, instead of acknowledging anything, just leaned against Otabek’s chest, warmth blossoming out between their bodies. It felt far different in the privacy and safety of the cloud than it had when they huddled for warmth and survival outside. Otabek had to take a moment to process it all, long enough that Yuri nudged his cheek. “Go on.”


	15. Just Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can tell that this is when I was really struggling during Nanowrimo ;A; I'm so sorry for the dip in quality!

Each returning Bolt brought back new stories from the surface, and Minami wrote down every one. He wasn’t terribly useful in the current decathalot challenge, but he knew the Sky Prince hungered for stories and would want to hear everything he could when he came back. 

And he’d come back, of course. He _had_ to come back. He’d come back, and they’d get to the prince’s globe in the highest reaches of the tower, and all of this chaos and void business would go away. Yes. That’s exactly what would happen.

It had to happen, Minami thought. Contemplating the alternatives was making his feathers fall out.

At least Yuri had returned. He’d landed with a steed alongside him, a half-human steed who was the son of the Mastersmith and who knew where this ‘Japan’ was. Seung Gil had run calculations based on Otabek’s story and knew exactly when to send the Bolts down to try finding their Sky Prince. This time Jacques had insisted on going as well, even if his ephemeral presence would have no effect. Perhaps he finally felt guilty that one of his team had gone missing for days and he’d never even realized it. 

For now, the court was still in the castle, taking shifts trying to complete the Sky Prince’s contests and challenges. The last challenge had been particularly cruel, involving codes written on small scraps of paper hidden inside poppers filled with glitter. Every last member of the court was a sparkling mess. 

And the city was creaking. 

Storms below riled themselves up out of nothing, and even with more of the Bolts back to shepherd them, they often ran wildly out of control. Usually the city rose above whatever weathery turmoil affected the world below. Usually even the thunderstorms came, roared, and wept over the city, but didn’t disturb its foundations. 

Now the light crystals in the chandeliers tinkled as the castle shook. 

“Are we… safe?” Emil asked Seung Gil. 

Seung Gil looked up from a trail of blots he was inspecting. “To what percentage?”

Emil had no idea what that meant, and after a moment of looking perplexedly at Seung Gil, gave up. Seung Gil returned to his investigation. “The Castle can hold against these winds. For now.”

“How many more floors?” Guang Hong said, the exhaustion in his voice clear. He hadn’t been able to sleep well with the storms or in the Sky Prince’s fancy embroidered seats. Even snuggled in Laeo’s arms, he’d laid awake, and now his eyes drooped and he yawned between sentences.

“The globe is in the atrium of the main building,” Minami said. “The spires and towers go up much farther.”

“But how many floors?” 

“Not more than thirty.” 

Guang Hong looked hopelessly at the locked door barring them from progressing. 

“It’s not that much longer,” Laeo soothed, running a glittering hand through Guang Hong’s glittering hair. “We can do it.” The two magenta representatives embraced, tipping their foreheads together.

“I just feel like I can’t do anything,” Guang Hong said. “I don’t have numbers and I don’t read very fast and I’m not very big and my wings are very small and I can’t rub bowls the right way and—”

Laeo kissed his partner, cutting off the stream of thought. “There will be something that you can do exactly right, or that only you could ever do. I know it.” Laeo squeezed Guang Hong’s hands in his own. It would take years to get the glitter out of everything, and they could only hope they’d at least temporarily depleted the Sky Prince’s stash. 

“You really think so?” Guang Hong whispered. His crystal freckles, now layered with glittered, had a beautiful sheen, catching all of the twinkles from the Sky Prince’s chandeliers. Laeo wished they had a crystal pair to activate just then, because he knew the feeling in his chest would capture so much light. 

“I know it,” Laeo promised.

— 

Phichit’s tiny sprites ran around the Dreamery. He’d not had time to take the long hall home, so instead he brought the pets to live temporarily in the Dreamery with him. Toph would have been more upset, but there were nearly fifteen of them, all colors of the rainbow, and they had a strange affection for the Emissary, trailing him around like ducklings. Phichit was more than slightly jealous.

During the night hours for Japan, Phichit and Toph worked double duty, jogging down the rows of dreams, popping all but the most atrocious nightmares and keeping an eye out for the Sky Prince. They found another dream of Yuuri’s, and Phichit poured a bottle of dream draught over it to keep it stable until they could get it to the basin. 

“Oh—you’re back,” Yuuri said, the colors around him dissipating as Toph manifested. They were in the middle of a lake, frozen, and Toph could see the dream of the Sky Prince sitting on the shore. 

“We’re sending someone to you,” Toph said. “One of our own. To try and bring the Sky Prince back.”

Toph wasn’t expecting the frown that crossed Yuuri’s face. Emotions were so much stronger and less guarded in dreams. Yuuri took a deep breath, like he would have woken up if he could, and then shook his head to clear his thoughts. He looked to Toph: “He came through my dream,” Yuuri said with a gesture to the Sky Prince sitting on the shore. “Couldn’t you … take him back this way?” 

Into a dream and out again. 

Toph considered. It was worth a shot. 

But as he approached the Sky Prince, the image wavered, then disappeared altogether. “I’m sorry,” Yuuri said. “I tried to keep imagining him.”

“He wasn’t real. Just a figment of yours,” Toph said. “It was a good suggestion—” Toph froze mid sentence. “But… if it were the Sky Prince’s dream… that’s a direct connection to him. I could try to pull him out.” His great wings wavered with the ramifications of the idea. “I should go, discuss this with the others.”

“Wait!” Yuuri called. He cleared his throat, toeing the ground. “…Do you want to try it?” Frozen sakura blossoms swirled around the pair, somehow light and buoyant despite their icy shells. 

“What?”

“On… on me,” Yuuri whispered, blushing bright. “If you can take someone out of their dreams… you know what mine look like now. You could try to—to take me to the city.”

Toph went very still, fingers steepled in front of himself in thought. “I have to ask the court. And you must ask the Sky Prince. His authority would be the one we defer to, bringing new souls into our city.”

Yuuri had expected far less than that. He couldn’t believe the spirit was even considering it. “Alright,” Yuuri promised. “I will.”

— 

“I have a theory for returning the Sky Prince to the city,” Toph said. 

“Toph. I was right here. I heard everything,” Phichit said, gesturing to his position beside the dream draught basin. Then: “I think it’s brilliant. Except for one problem.”

“What?” Toph asked. 

“We’re citizens,” Phichit said. “We don’t dream.” 

— 

Yuuri woke up to the soft pink-violet light of dawn shining against the rice paper panel of his window. Victor was on the floor beside his bed, curled up on a mat and piled in blankets. He was sleeping soundly, swaddled almost like a child. His hair didn’t glow quite as strongly as it first had, Yuuri realized. It looked like the moon when Victor arrived, nearly luminescent, and now it was simply a shimmery silver.

“Victor?” Yuuri murmured. He was rewarded with a pair of sleepy but shining blue eyes. 

“Yuuri,” Victor said, and like a puppy he got up at the sound of his name and took himself, blankets and all, into Yuuri’s bed. “Good morning,” Victor said, making a space for himself beside Yuuri. His eyes fell shut again.

“I talked to Christopher again,” Yuuri said, forcing himself to remember the dream before it vanished. “He thinks if he can find your dream, he can pull you back into the city.”

“That’s nice,” Victor said, half asleep, falling back into unconsciousness again with his head nestled into Yuuri’s pillow. 

“Victor,” Yuuri pressed, nudging him. “Did you hear? You just need to have a dream and they can bring you back to the city.”

“Well that’s silly,” Victor scoffed, then yawned. He blinked his bright sky eyes at Yuuri. “I’ve never dreamed before in my life!” 

“What?!” Yuuri looked taken aback. “You’ve never had a dream? Victor, surely, of course, you’ve had a dream. Everyone dreams. It’s how—it’s how we take everything from the day and process it. It’s where our fears and our hopes escape.”

“Oh, no,” Victor said, shaking his head. “Those all stay inside me.” He tapped his chest. 

“Victor…” 

“Do you want to hear about them?” Victor said cheerfully, and before Yuuri could say yes or no, Victor rolled on his back and started to list them off, staring at the ceiling as he counted them on his fingers. “Let’s see. I’m afraid that the Earl of Indigo’s cookie recipe is too spicy. I’m afraid of getting lost in the tunnels under the clouds and missing dinner. I’m afraid that I will never have a family.” Victor said them all with the same thoughtful quality. Then, he turned on his side to look at Yuuri again. “Now, your turn.” 

Yuuri looked at Victor, laying his hand over the Sky Prince’s. “You’re welcome in our family any time, Vicchan,” Yuuri said. It was a nickname his mother had taken to using. Sky Prince or no Sky Prince, Victor was a guest of the onsen—not to mention Yuuri’s mother had been there for Victor’s heartfelt confession, and ever since she’d been extra cheerful around Victor and encouraging to Yuuri. 

As if Yuuri had any idea how to court a spirit from the sky. 

“Well, maybe I will be here a very long time, if I can’t dream,” Victor said. 

“I want you to dream,” Yuuri smiled. “Maybe you’ll see something extraordinary.”

“I already saw that in a dream,” Victor murmured, gazing at Yuuri with that intensity that always made Yuuri flush. 

Yuuri had to clear his throat and look away, though he couldn’t help his mind’s laser focus on the way Victor was holding his hand. 

“Well… I’m afraid of—” Yuuri paused in thought. “I don’t know if I’m afraid. I know that one day my parents will die and my body will get too old to skate on the ice. I know that I might get sick myself and pass away. I’m not afraid of those things, but they make me grateful that right now I’m healthy, and my family is healthy, and I can skate and go out under the sakura blossoms and shovel snow.” Yuuri smiled to himself. Victor’s face was so close to his, sharing the pillow, and he could feel Victor’s breath brushing against his cheek. “And I’m happy that I met you. I never thought I was anything special, but, maybe, if my dream was the one that made the Sky Prince fall from the sky… maybe I can be more confident that I won’t be forgotten.”

“Never forgotten, Yuuri,” Victor responded. “The colors I saw in your dream, the way that they streamed from you… I could never forget that. I’ve never in my life seen anything so beautiful.” Victor swallowed, then brought Yuuri’s hand to his chest. “I feel so tight here, and here…” Victor brought Yuuri’s hand up his chest, to his neck. 

“That—that’s love,” Yuuri whispered. 

“Love?” Victor’s blue eyes arced in confusion. “But—… only the crystal keepers feel love.” That was their job. Guang Hong and Laeo exemplified love: they experienced it, owned it, in the same way that the Bolts worked with lightning and the Mastersmith worked with metals. 

Yuuri’s hand still rested near Victor’s throat; he brushed his thumb so slowly along Victor’s collar bone. “Maybe… things are different on the surface.”

Victor’s innards felt like a storm themselves, everything fluttery and electric, and if this was love, this tightness, this incredible sensation, then suddenly he understood why Guang Hong and Laeo never wanted to be apart. Victor could spend the rest of his life feeling this way and never tire of it. He wanted to be at Yuuri’s side, to feel Yuuri’s touch, to feel—

Victor licked his lips. If this was love, then—

He leaned forward with the utmost care and caution, but Yuuri seemed to understand, wordless. Yuuri’s eyes closed and Victor touched his lips against Yuuri’s. His heart shivered under his skin, creating a cascade of tingles that ran up and down his body. Yuuri’s hand cupped Victor’s cheek, and instead of ending the kiss, Yuuri pressed his lips more firmly to Victor’s, as if he never wanted it to end. 

So Victor kissed him, kissed him and marveled at the sensations in his body until he couldn’t breathe, and then he pulled back and laughed, breathless. 

“Yuuri—” he started, but what else could he say? “I love you?” He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe he was able to feel such an emotion. 

“I think so,” Yuuri flushed. Then he turned and pressed his red face into the pillows. “My whole family thinks so, too. My mom keeps teasing me about it.”

“Teasing?” Victor asked. 

Yuuri peeked out at him: “You’re a spirit, Victor. You’re the Sky Prince! And look at me.” 

“I am,” Victor said, stroking Yuuri’s messy morning hair back. “And I want to kiss you again.” 

They kissed again, scooting closer, and as Yuuri’s arm came around Victor’s bare back, he didn’t even notice that the iridescent patches for his wings had faded away to nothing.


	16. Greetings & Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ._. I forgot to post ._.

The air in the city turned crisp with the promise of another storm, sneaking in after morning’s chill. Yuri’s breath fogged up in front of him, and he’d added the thickest padding beneath his armor. He and Otabek walked side by side to the stable, stopping outside the stall. 

“You’re sure about this?” Yuri asked, holding out the bridle. It felt heavy in his hands in a way it never had before: laden with the weight of Otabek’s sacrifice, perhaps—of how much control Otabek was giving him, and how much trust it took to relinquish that control.

“I’m sure,” Otabek nodded. He stepped into the stall, the cloud soft beneath his shoes, and transformed. It always looked strange, especially now that Yuri could see it in full definition. His eyesight was perfectly clear, no longer plagued by any lingering dots or haze. At the end of it, a raven black pegasus stood before Yuri, testing his wings. 

Yuri threw Otabek’s saddle blanket over his back, smoothing it over the pegasus’ mighty shoulders. Once the saddle was firmly situated and the armor plates rested on Otabek’s chest, haunches, and at the joins of his forelegs, Yuri brought out the bridle. With a breath, he held the bit to Otabek’s mouth, and the pegasus accepted, chewing on it until it settled in the gap between his fore and back teeth. Then Yuri placed the leather straps over his ears and grabbed the buckle beneath his chin. 

It felt strange—too strange—and he didn’t know why until he tightened the strap. 

Otabek fell through the floor, leaving a half horse, half human hole in the cloud as he plummeted towards the ground miles below. 

“OTABEK!” Yuri screamed, and he dove after him without thinking. 

They’d fallen through the city’s cloud layer in no time, stray crystals cutting up their skin as they plummeted. 

Yuri caught sight of Otabek when they cleared the clouds—he was human, struggling to get the bridle off of him, falling with his gear suspended around him. He had an odd mark on his forehead, blackest black. 

“TRANSFORM!” Yuri said, but the wind whipped at his words. 

Otabek spread out his limbs, and Yuri caught up to him, tried to grab him—

And passed directly through him. 

“No!” Yuri choked, trying again to grab onto Otabek, but his hands and arms just moved through him. Yuri tried touching the saddle: solid, the armor: solid. But even those things were of the city, and when he brought them to Otabek, trying to do anything to slow his descent, they passed through. 

“Yuri!” Otabek called out. “Yuri—I know you’re there!” He had to scream just to be audible, and Yuri could tell it was hard for him to even breathe. 

Yuri tried to move beneath him, to grip at the cloth tunic he wore. “I’m here,” he promised, his lips near Otabek’s. He kept his wings tight to his back, falling in time. “I’m here, Otabek, Otabek I can’t—I can’t do anything, I can’t touch you—” Tears welled up in Yuri’s eyes, diamonds whisked away by the wind. “Otabek, I don’t know what to—”

“I can’t transform,” Otabek shouted over the wind. He touched the black mark on his forehead, as if somehow he could rub it away. Yuri grabbed for the bridle, looked at the band that went across Otabek’s forehead, and found a small tack of metal pressed into the leather. The metal was so dark it didn’t even have a gleam, as if all of the light that touched it simply vanished instead. Yuri trembled just looking at it. When it had been pressed against Otabek’s skin…

“It’s not your fault,” Otabek shouted. “It’s not your fault, Yuri.” 

The definition in the world below them sharpened by the moment. Yuri couldn’t breathe. “No. No no no. No. No, please, please, no. Otabek, please. Please, I just found you. We’re supposed to be together, we’re a pair, we’re—please don’t leave me. Please, please, please.” Yuri wept openly, and even Otabek’s eyes looked wet. Otabek twisted so he was looking up, eyes towards the sky and the city he could no longer see. 

“I love you,” Otabek said as the world rushed up beneath him. “Yuri, I’m sorry. I love—”


	17. Taint & Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, this is a happy story.

The cookies Emil made almost two weeks ago still hadn’t lost their flavor. Each floor, a platter of dishes and desserts awaited them: cookies, cloudcakes, candy floss, gem drops, along with loaves of sugar-laced bread and wheels of sleep sheep cheese. It was just… much more difficult to enjoy them when black drops of ink lurked on the floor and the wind howled around the castle and no one in the court could figure out how, exactly, to arrange the flowers to make the next door open. Urgency had a way of turning the Sky Prince’s cute contest into a torture. 

‘Prettiest Bouquet’ was all the contest banner read, and Georgi had already shed far too many tears from failing with his arrangements. 

“Am I not the authority of all aesthetics? The forebear of fashion? The one thing I should be able to accomplish with a glance—” He made a show of weeping over his chartreuse bouquet, adding yet more tears to the already impressive pile of diamonds. 

“There has to be something we’re missing,” Emil soothed as he munched on one of the gem drops. His own bouquet was a droopy arrangement of weeping indigo orchids, their bell blossoms gazing towards the ground, an iris spire looming above them. 

Laeo and Guang Hong’s bouquet looked like magenta fireworks, sprays of tiny star blossoms emanating from the vase, accented with spider mums and spiraling pink lilies. “Maybe we have to vote on whose is the prettiest,” Laeo suggested. 

“But wouldn’t it be the Sky Prince’s decision?” Emil asked. 

“I miss him,” Minami said, looking up from his bouquet, which so far was just a single red rose. “He was always so…” Minami floundered “… well… we always knew he was here, didn’t we? And that made me feel good.”

“Me too,” Laeo agreed. “I’m never going to be upset about his glitter again.”

Mickey rolled his eyes. “His glitter is terrible. I don’t care how lost he is.” 

“Mickey!” Emil chastised.

“He was so colorful,” Georgi wept. 

They all went silent, looking between each other, to the vases, and all at once everyone took some of the flowers from the bouquets and shoved them towards Georgi’s vase. It took Georgi the longest to realize what he’d said, but then he was pulling flowers left and right, arranging his vase into a rainbow of color, just like their Sky Prince so loved. 

Once they got all eleven of the colors represented, they heard the door click, and everyone cheered as they rushed towards the short staircase and bridge of rainbow that connected to the next floor. 

Only, when they got there, the bridge was shattered. 

Laeo stopped in his tracks. The crystals on either side, normally vibrant with color and solidified by metal bearings, were dark and smoky, cracked. When Guang Hong saw, he fell to his knees. So many loving kisses, so many stored colors, so many sunrises and sunsets, all shattered, tainted. Laeo turned his back on the sight, too painful to endure, so it was Minami who went and touched the crystals, confirming their deaths. 

“Who could do such a thing?” Guang Hong cried against Laeo’s shoulder. 

“The same person who’s making the storms,” Mickey said. “The same person who wrote that book. Chaos and void.”

“Come on,” Seung Gil said, stepping forward from the group and flying across the gap. “We have to keep going.” 

— 

On the next floor, the platter of food had gone moldy and sickly, covered in black warts. Shadows emanated from the room’s corners, the crystals showing the same scars as the ones on the bridge. Only the high windows let in light, and that light was fading as the storm came in.

The golden orb for the prince’s challenge lay on the floor, battered and indented as if it had been bludgeoned. 

“I don’t like this,” Guang Hong whimpered, still teary. “I’m scared.”

“Me too,” Laeo said softly. 

Emil picked up the golden orb, trying to press the indentation that normally made it pop open and the banner appear. The orb cracked down the center in response and couldn’t open more than an inch. It took Emil and Mickey working together to pry it open and manually unfold the banner. 

CONTEST THE TWENTY-NINTH: SEE SAW  
Draw the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen  
Don’t forget to frame it!

The room had frames all around it, dark-stained windwood, light-stained windwood, and three covered in gold, silver, and bronze leaf. Throughout the room stood 11 easels, and beside each one a palette of colors, all eleven of the base hues, with night black and noon white to mix. Laeo dipped his finger into the magenta color and drew a small heart on Guang Hong’s cheek, trying to cheer up his partner. Then Laeo smooshed their cheeks together, so he could have the mirror image on his skin, too. That brought a little smile back to Guang Hong’s face, and he even added rainbow polka dots to Laeo’s brow and other cheek. 

“Maybe it just needs the weight of a canvas,” Seung Gil hypothesized, going to the frame and inspecting it for any connections to the locking mechanism on the door. Not that they’d figured out how the flower one had worked.

“Very well then. I call it: the noon sun,” Georgi said, hefting up one of the blank canvases and bringing it over to the golden frame. “Any objections to my quality artwork taking first place?”

The rest of the court shook their heads, and Georgi went to place it. A particularly brutal gust of wind made the castle jostle beneath him and he tripped forward, knocking his head on the wooden frame and promptly falling unconscious, a large egg forming on his forehead. 

“Georgi!” Minami shouted, rushing to his side. He gave a little groan, but nothing more than that. Seung Gil stepped unceremoniously over the curled up Chartreuse Chancellor and grabbed the frame from its hooks. Minami shook Georgi’s shoulders. “Georgi, are you alright?” 

“He’ll be fine,” Seung Gil said. “Let him rest.” Seung Gil studied the mechanisms to affix canvas to frame, grabbing a padded hammer and starting to wedge the fasteners in. “Emil; you’re stronger,” Seung Gil said, holding out the hammer. 

“Strong?” Emil balked. 

“You spend all day kneading dough and throwing taffy,” Seung Gil said, losing his patience. “Just… hammer these in.”

The whole city jolted again, almost as if it was being pushed or shoved by some colossal creature. Everything careened sideways and easels and palettes toppled, creating a mess that would have been beautiful if the danger weren’t so grave. Everyone besides Georgi took flight, little wings keeping them airborne as a terrifying, low whine came from the bones of the castle itself, creaking like it was about to sunder. 

They didn’t even have enough time to panic before everything went still again, the castle shuddering back into place. 

No… this was more than still. Minami landed carefully on the ground again, as if he could no longer trust it. He’d never felt anything like this in his life. Things weren’t just still… they were stopped. 

Somehow, the city itself had been wrenched from its course in the jetstream, and now it sat apart, idling in the sky, motionless over the earth below. 

“What happened?” Minami asked. 

Seung Gil shook his head. It was obvious what had happened. He hung up the golden-framed canvas when Emil finished tightening it, then went to the silver and held his hand out for a canvas. “Call this one fresh snow,” Minami said, placing it in Seung Gil’s reach. 

“And this one is sleep sheep wool,” Mickey said, bringing a third canvas to go in the bronze frame. Minami nursed Georgi, though he was throwing such dramatic fits they decided to leave him be. Emil just kept hammering until the last canvas was firmly in place, and Seung Gil placed it back on its hooks. The door clicked open.

“Mickey,” Minami implored, “Watch over Georgi.” And somehow, that was a more pleasant idea to him than continuing the ascent. 

The court rushed up a narrow stairwell to the thirtieth floor. It opened into a room that looked more like the deck of a ship, covered in a geometric half-dome of glass that gave everyone a view of the city, and the sky, and the white expanse below. A few of the dome’s glass triangles had shattered, and the steering wheel that occupied the veranda was splintered and dripping black-as-night liquid. It had been wrenched so hard it was barely attached to its axis. Whoever had invaded the castle, they’d steered the entire city off-course.

“… Is this it? Is this the end?” Guang Hong asked in a small voice.

“No… this isn’t the Sky Prince’s room. There’s no globe. We’re not there yet,” Minami said. “But… where’s the challenge?”

Seung Gil studied one of the broken panes, the shape of its hole oddly similar to the golden orbs. “Gone,” he said, pointing. 

“How—how do we move on if don’t have the orb? We don’t even know what the puzzle is,” Emil said, staring at the rotten food on the table. 

“Look,” Laeo said, gesturing to the next door. It swung off its hinges, dripping the same black fluid as the steering wheel. “It doesn’t matter.”

With Georgi out for the count and Mickey watching after him, they were down to five, but no one wanted to be the first one forward. Finally, Seung Gil took the lead, avoiding the black shadow tar and shoving the door out of the way. 

“Sh-shouldn’t we get the Bolts?” Minami fretted. “We can’t fight. What if there’s someone bad? I don’t know anything about fighting…”

“The bolts are going to find the Sky Prince, remember?” Seung Gil said. “We don’t have time.”

Seung Gil steeled himself and ascended the dozen stairs to the thirty-and-a-half floor: the prince’s private quarters, and the globe.


	18. Kisses & Comforts

Victor woke up for the second time in a day, filled with warmth and a fizzy sensation in his chest. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Yuuri’s contented, sleeping expression, and the first thing he felt was Yuuri’s slow breath rising and falling beneath his arm. He remembered kissing. He remembered kissing until he couldn’t breathe, and then holding, and then drifting away like they were on their own cloud, on a breeze powered purely by this feeling between them. Yuuri was a king, and a magician, and a perfectly ordinary person that Victor had fallen utterly and completely in love with. 

He kissed Yuuri, just because he could, and Yuuri’s eyes fluttered open. For a split second Yuuri startled, then blushed at his own reaction.

“Morning,” Yuuri whispered. “Again.”

“Am I dreaming?” Victor asked. “What does it feel like?”

“Somehow, this isn’t a dream,” Yuuri said. “I can touch you, feel you…” He put his thumb against Victor’s cheek bone, pressing ever so gently. “In a dream everything’s… fuzzier. People shift into other people, you see places you haven’t been in years. But it doesn’t feel like this. Solid.”

Victor touched Yuuri’s face, gliding his fingertips over Yuuri’s cheek. 

“It doesn’t sound so great, then,” Victor mused. 

Yuuri laughed: “It’s the good dreams that make it all worth it.” 

“Like when you were skating?”

“Exactly,” Yuuri smiled, and then he was getting covered in Victor’s kisses again. He would have stayed there forever, basking in Victor’s affection, if his mother hadn’t knocked on the door.

“Yuuri! There’s more snow!” 

“Coming!” Yuuri said. He sat up, and Victor, too, and all of Victor’s blankets and clothes just fell off of him like nothing as he rose. That was when Yuuri noticed his back. “Vicchan… your wings.”

Yuuri touched the place where the patches had been, but Victor couldn’t see. 

“The shimmer… it’s gone,” Yuuri said. “You look… human now.”

“Oh, good!” Victor smiled. “Then I can start dreaming, and I can take you to the city, and we can blow all of this snow away.”

Yuuri shook his head in amusement. He touched Victor’s back again, tracing his memory of the wing patches. “We should go visit Minako.”

“The crazy woman?”

“She was just excited to meet you,” Yuuri flushed. “…She might know a way to help you dream.” 

“Alright,” Victor agreed. “But first: we have to shovel snow for mom.”

— 

“Yuuri, it’s heavy,” Victor lamented, his shovel barely wedged beneath the thick white muck. Yuuri had already cleared several of the smaller paths around the onsen and was working on the main entrance, which Victor had started at the very beginning and yet only a small square of stones showed through. Yuuri’s mother had insisted that Victor needn’t busy himself with chores, but Victor wanted to see what it was like. 

…He didn’t much like it. 

“You can rest, Vicchan; I’ll do it,” Yuuri said. 

Victor sighed, leaning on the shovel, and watched Yuuri in all his bundled layers rapidly cast the snow off the path. 

“Snow looks pretty when it builds up like this,” Victor said. “In the city, you only ever see it falling.” 

“Really?” Yuuri asked. He finished one row, then came back to the start to do the next. “Does that mean you’ve never thrown a snowball?” Yuuri had more than a little mischief in his voice as he reached down for the snow, collecting it into a ball and then throwing it at the tree trunk beside Victor, where it poofed into a white flurry. Victor looked absolutely shocked, so shocked it was adorable, and Yuuri laughed and made another snowball, handing it over to him. “You try.”

Victor lobbed the snowball terribly. It bounced off the tree and flopped back into the snow, where Victor retrieved it to study. Confident that this would keep the Sky Prince entertained, Yuuri went back to shoveling snow. 

A moment later a thick, damp snowball hit the back of Yuuri’s hanten. 

“Hah! You have snow on your back!” Victor laughed as if this was the most humorous thing that had happened all day. He clapped his gloves together, then reached down to make another snowball. 

“Vicchan!” Yuuri whirled on him, dropping the shovel momentarily to make another ball, which he used to peg Victor in the leg. 

“Ack!” Victor gasped. “Yuuri!” 

“Don’t start a battle you can’t win, Vicchan,” Yuuri grinned, dodging Victor’s next snowball. Victor huffed, trying again, and that time he grazed Yuuri’s leg. 

“Did I win?!” Victor exclaimed, elated. 

Yuuri couldn’t help it. He went up to Victor, clapping his shoulder. “You certainly won, Vicchan.” Victor’s cheeks were bright red from the cold, only a faint hint of the rainbow color hidden beneath his skin. 

“This should be a contest for my court, when I get back to the city,” Victor said. “You can teach everyone how to play.”

“Me?” Yuuri asked. 

“You said you were going to go to the city, didn’t you? Toph was going to try and take you, when you dreamed?” Victor encouraged. “Then I can meet you, and we can make a family, and you can live with me in the castle.”

Yuuri blushed. “But what about my family here?”

“You can talk to them in their dreams, and come back to visit,” Victor said. “I know exactly what your dreams look like now.” 

Yuuri returned to his shovel, picking it up and going back to work. 

Victor watched, head cocked to the side: “… you’ll come with me, won’t you, Yuuri? Aren’t you supposed to stay close to the one you love?”

The snow felt so much heavier on the shovel than it had before. Yuuri tossed the white stuff aside, then pushed the shovel under it again, relying on the rhythm. “You are,” Yuuri agreed. “…But I love my family here, too. I have to think about it, Vicchan.”

He reached the end of the path in record time and twisted around to look at Victor, who was watching him with those soft thoughtful eyes. 

“Come on,” Yuuri said, holding out his hand like a peace offering. “Let me take you to Minako’s.”

— 

To say Minako was eager to see them was doing her bridled enthusiasm a disservice. In less than a minute, she had water warming for tea, a dozen candles in the greeting room lit, and finer pillows than Yuuri had ever seen at her home to sit upon. 

“How can I help you, Sky Prince?” Minako asked. 

“I need to dream,” Victor said. 

Yuuri stepped in for clarification. “Another spirit spoke to me in my dream, and said that if Victor dreams, they can draw him out of the dream and back to the city,” Yuuri explained to Minako’s confused expression. “But… Victor says he doesn’t dream. So… we were hoping that there was something we could do to help… encourage it?”

Minako poured hot water out into each of the tea bowls to warm them and purify them, then emptied them and added tea powder. “Well, let’s begin simply. Dreams come when we are closest to waking. Are you sleeping until you naturally rise, Sky Prince, or is something waking you before your time?” 

Victor thought about it. “Well… usually I sleep, and then I’m awake,” he explained. “This morning, I woke up when Yuuri said my name. The first time. Then we—”

Yuuri cleared his throat sharply. “Victor— _your highness_ —I think Minako was asking if you woke up on your own. The second time.” 

“Oh, after?” Victor asked, and Yuuri urgently tried to usher the conversation forward. “Yes, the second time I woke up because I was done sleeping.”

“Have you tried sleeping when you aren’t tired?” Minako asked, whisking the tea powder and water together. 

“Why would anyone do that?” Victor cocked his head. 

“Sometimes, you can settle your mind into sleep and the dreams come then, when you have a surplus of rest,” Minako explained, placing the tea bowl in front of Victor. “I would attempt it.” 

Victor sniffed at the tea in curiosity. Hiroko had made him tea, but it was always a rich brown, and this was bright green. Yuuri cleared his throat again, very softly, and showed Victor how to sip from the bowl. Victor mimicked as best he could, winding up with a frothy green mustache above his upper lip. 

Both Minako and Yuuri stared at him with barely concealed joy at how cute it was; then, Minako offered her tea towel to Victor, but he just laid it across his lap, none the wiser. 

“Well,” Minako said, continuing as if the apparent ruler of the cosmos didn’t have a matcha mustache, “We can also try to induce a dream state herbally.” 

“What does that mean?” Victor asked. 

“Certain plants can be prepared in such a way that they can create visions when one ingests them or inhales them,” Minako said. “You saw Mari with her cigarettes,” Minako gave as an example, “just imagine an incense or smoke that could make you dream.”

“Oh,” Victor beamed. “Well that sounds easy. Let’s do that.”

“Right,” Minako sighed. “The only issue is that the plants I need are buried under this snow.”

“Yuuri is very good at shoveling,” Victor said, gesturing to the side. He tapped his finger to his lips, and that was how he realized he was decorated in tea foam. His tongue crept out to swipe it away. “Would that help?”

Yuuri patted Victor’s arm: “I can’t shovel a whole forest floor.”

“Of course you could, Yuuri!” Victor smiled. “Believe in yourself!” 

“Now,” Minako said. “There _is_ an apothecary in the city that should sell what I need.”

“The City doesn’t have an apothecary,” Victor corrected her. “… I don’t think. I _have_ been gone a very long time.”

“Our city, Vicchan,” Yuuri smiled. “Not yours.” 

“How confusing,” he lamented. 

Minako pulled out a small slip of fibrous paper and wrote her requests down, holding it out to Yuuri. 

“Wait, we have to go get it?” Yuuri said. 

“It’s _expensive_ ,” Minako winked. Yuuri looked down the list, sighed.

“Alright,” he agreed. He turned to Victor: “We have to stop back at the onsen. We’re going to need a horse.”

“Oh, a pegasus, _finally_ ,” Victor looked relieved. “It’s so heavy here, I don’t know how you keep walking everywhere.”

Yuuri shook his head with a smile, not bothering to explain. Victor would see soon enough. Minako, of course, drank all of this new information in with starving eyes, withdrawing a booklet and jotting down notes as Victor started to ramble about his own pegasus: a pure white stallion, gallant wings, sungold shoes, with rainbow crystals woven into his hair. 

“You’ll see, Yuuri, when Toph takes you to the city,” Victor smiled as he and Yuuri drew their hanten back on. Yuuri spent several moments adjusting the various brooches and pins required to make any form of textile stay on Victor’s body. That hadn’t changed, even if his iridescent wing patches had faded. Victor continued to talk as if being dressed by someone else was perfectly normal. “Maybe you can even go tonight! You must say hello to my pegasus if you go, won’t you? You’ll know him when you see him. He’s the only one who’s pure white. The Bolts’ steeds are all jet black, and the Flakes’ steeds are dapple gray. The pegasi for the court are all different colors of the rainbow, and all shapes and sizes, too. Georgi, he’s the Chartreuse Chancellor — his is so lanky and strange.” 

Minako practically drooled. 

“Thank you, Minako,” Yuuri said, partially to snap her out of it, and partially to indicate that he was shuffling in his pockets, not sure how exactly to compensate her for this level of advisory. 

“Oh no, no charge,” Minako waved him off, pointing to the door. “I have all the payment I need,” she said, slapping her booklet closed. And then they were outside, though they could hear Minako still shuffling through her books within.

“She’s very strange,” Victor mused as they walked back through the snow. “Do you really think she can make me dream?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuri admitted. “I don’t know how any of it works, really. But she knew who you were when no one else did, so hopefully she knows more about this, too.”

Victor reached out, taking Yuuri’s hand, and even through the gloves they wore Yuuri could feel the prince’s heat. “What do you think I’ll dream about, Yuuri?” Victor asked. He was trying to step in his old footprints, like a little game. “If I do, I mean. Do you think I could ever have a dream like yours? All colors and dancing and moving like you’re flying?”

“Well, you’ve flown before, haven’t you?” Yuuri said. “So… if you dream of that, your dream might be even more beautiful than mine.”

“Never,” Victor shook his head. “The only way I could have a more beautiful dream would be if I dreamed of you.” 

“Vicchan!” Yuuri flushed. 

“It’s true.”

— 

There were a dozen little towns on the ride to Fukuoka, and Victor watched them all go by from the back of a horse, his arms around Yuuri. 

“There’s another storm coming,” Victor warned after several hours on the road, when the sun’s slant was deepening towards sunset. 

“We have at least another hour before we’re there,” Yuuri said. 

Victor frowned, hoping that was enough time. To preoccupy himself, he asked Yuuri questions about everything they saw, and then had to be taught that certain questions needed to wait until the people they were about were well out of earshot. 

“But his eye went sideways!” Victor said. “Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why, Victor, you can’t ask questions like that,” Yuuri nudged him. “Not while they can hear you. It’s very rude. You aren’t even supposed to look at anyone for longer than you would an average person.”

“But Yuuri I want to look at you forever,” Victor whined, hooking his chin over Yuuri’s shoulder. 

“Alright, we’ll make an exception for me,” Yuuri promised. “But only for me.” Victor was getting his fair share of looks, too. Anyone who saw him marveled at the color of his hair and skin, his blue eyes. Some people were even frightened, until Yuuri explained he was a spirit. Though, admittedly, there was one woman for whom this only increased her fear. 

They made it to the outskirts of Fukuoka just as the wind turned sharp and found a ryokan with space for the night and stabling for their horse (whom Victor had insisted on calling Tiny Prince for his size and how he pranced). Yuuri left Victor with Tiny Prince until he’d gotten them a room, then went to collect Victor, only to find him in a circle of children—apparently all family of the innkeeper. 

“I want to touch it!” one of the children said, reaching up towards Victor hair, which he happily put down within their reach. 

“So soft!” the children oohed. 

“Can I touch yours?!” Victor asked in excitement, but the kids all looked at him and laughed and then ran off. Victor pouted. 

“Come on, Vicchan,” Yuuri smiled. “It’s too cold out here. Come inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... the next bit that comes is explicit. I wanted to give everyone a heads up and see whether you wanted it to be posted in here, and to just increase the rating of the work, or posted elsewhere with a link, so the work's rating could stay teen.


	19. Sachet & Stimulus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ask and ye shall receive ^-^

Yuuri Katsuki ushered Victor into their shared room at the ryokan and slid the door closed behind him. He took a moment to collect himself, to decide if this was really what he wanted to do. He’d been thinking about it most of the ride in between entertaining Victor’s increasingly odd questions, and if he was honest, long before that. Taking a breath, he steeled himself for it. 

“Vicchan,” Yuuri called, voice delicate and hesitant. 

“Yuuri? Are you okay?” Victor asked, looking over his shoulder from where he’d been exploring the small closet. The robes inside didn’t look like the onsen robes he was used to, and he tracked his fingers along the hem in curiosity and evaluation. “These are not as nice as your mother’s.” 

Yuuri wouldn’t let himself get distracted. He went to Victor’s side and took his hand. 

“Vicchan. Victor,” Yuuri said. “I… want to try something. To—to help make you dream.”

That caught Victor’s attention. He twisted to face Yuuri. 

“Sometimes, when something new and incredible happens to me, I dream about it, or it makes me dream,” Yuuri said. “The first time I skated, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and—” and after the kiss they’d shared, well… 

“Are we going to do something incredible?!” Victor asked in eagerness. 

“Yes, I’d like to, if you want to try,” Yuuri flushed. “Come—come to bed with me, Victor.” Yuuri held Victor’s hand, taking him to the mats and blankets and settling down with him. Victor had already cast aside his hanten, so Yuuri started to undo the ties and brooches that kept the rest of the clothes on Victor’s body. Curiosity twinkled in Victor’s eyes, fully attentive, and he even shivered when Yuuri’s hand trailed down to his wrist. Yuuri guided Victor’s hand to his obi. “Now… you take off my clothes,” Yuuri encouraged.

“I thought it was rude not to wear clothes?” Victor asked. 

“Not in private. Not with the person you love,” Yuuri assured. 

The tip of Victor’s tongue stuck out between his teeth as he started on Yuuri’s obi, untying it and then working on the flaps of his robe. He brushed them aside as if he expected the material to just fall off Yuuri’s body the way it did with his, but the friction of Yuuri’s skin meant Victor had to slide his hand down each arm, easing off either sleeve. 

Yuuri laid down on his back, his eyes never leaving Victor, and Victor took that as a sign to continue, hands going to the ties of Yuuri’s undergarment. He drew down the cloth, brushing against a familiar hardness along the way. 

“Oh—the sickness is back,” Victor said. 

“It’s not sickness,” Yuuri reminded him. He used his feet to kick his underwear the rest of the way off, then took Victor’s hand and brought it between his legs. “Sometimes you feel love in your chest, and your heart, and sometimes… it goes all the way down here.” 

“And you want to make a family?” Victor smiled. He was familiar with that. In theory.

“And you want to be with the other person,” Yuuri steered. “To be as close as you can possibly get.” He curled Victor’s fingers around the shape, then slowly started moving them up and down. “To make your lover feel like the center of the universe.”

Victor watched his hand intently, learning from Yuuri’s guidance until he could take over himself. Yuuri’s eyes rolled back with a shudder, nails biting briefly into Victor’s wrist. “Yes—Victor. It feels so good.” Victor wasn’t quite sure what was happening. But: he knew that when he looked down, his body was a rigid mirror of Yuuri’s, and he knew that the expression on Yuuri’s face was one of the most beautiful he’d ever seen, almost as if Yuuri was hurting, but in a way that showed complete surrender. 

“I want to kiss you,” Victor said, and he found himself breathless.

“Kiss me,” Yuuri encouraged, and then, against Victor’s lips, as he found his legs widening, he pleaded: “Just don’t stop.” 

Victor didn’t stop, though his rhythm occasionally stuttered as he switched focus between the kiss and the touch. He found his hips moving in a strange way, almost like the little waves at the shore of the lake on a windy day. Lapping and lapping against Yuuri’s thigh. 

“Stop— stop,” Yuuri warned, pushing Victor gently away. 

“But you said—“ Victor panted, lying next to Yuuri, wondering what he’d done wrong. 

Yuuri nodded. “I know. But if it feels too good, then everything comes crashing down. It’s the most incredible thing in the world, but—I don’t want to crash down just yet.”

Yuuri put a hand on Victor’s chest, guiding him to turn on his back, and Yuuri knelt beside him, reaching between his legs. 

White knuckles fisted the blankets as Victor felt Yuuri’s touch for the first time, fingers forming a delicious circle that he dragged from the tip of Victor’s strangely toned appendage all the way down to the root. Victor choked, bringing the back of his hand to his mouth and biting at the skin because he had no idea how to handle any of what he felt.

“Yuuri,” Victor whimpered, “please.” 

“Shh, Vicchan,” Yuuri whispered, kissing him as he stroked. Victor’s hips still reflexively arched upwards on occasion, pressing himself more firmly into the tight ring of Yuuri’s fingers, and then, at once, when Victor’s whole body was starting to go taut, Yuuri pulled his hand away.

“No—Yuuri—!” Victor whimpered. “It felt—It felt—”

“I know,” Yuuri soothed. He swallowed. This was the part he was most frightened of. “Don’t worry. It isn’t over. I just want… I want to be as close as I can to you. Do you want that, too?”

“Yes,” Victor said. “Please. Yuuri.”

Yuuri leaned over the mats, grabbing his travel bag, and pulled out a small sachet of grease. He laid on his back while Victor watched in the candlelight, legs spreading, grease smeared between his fingers and then lower between his legs. It got oily as his body temperature warmed it, and soon his body glistened—or at least that one reddish indentation seated deep between his cheeks. 

“Come here, Victor,” Yuuri encouraged. “Between my legs.” The last of the sachet’s grease went into Yuuri’s palm, to be spread across Victor’s hard flesh. “This—this is the closest two people can get. You’re going to go inside of me, and it’s going to feel so good, and you can move your hips, okay?”

“Inside you?” Victor said, in awe of the idea. 

Yuuri bit his bottom lip, nodded, and guided Victor’s tip down. Yuuri had to shift his position, to lift and spread his legs wider, but finally everything aligned and he felt the squishy acorn helmet pressed into the most intimate crevice of his body. “You have to push now, with your hips, to get inside—just be gentle, go slowly, I’ve never—” Yuuri opened and closed his mouth, wondering for the words. 

“Loved anyone like this before?” Victor asked, and to Yuuri’s surprise he increased the pressure, and Yuuri felt his body start to give, every natural instinct trying to keep Victor out as sheer willpower forced his muscles to relax. 

“Yes,” Yuuri whispered, leaving greasy fingermarks on Victor’s shoulder as he held him. His eyes screwed shut as the pressure mounted and finally gave way. Yuuri could feel it inside, but he heard it, too, in the way that Victor’s breath hitched and the gasp that followed. “Go slow,” Yuuri whispered, a hand on Victor’s hips to encourage him to keep sinking in. It felt—it felt so, so strange: stretching, odd, but it was everything that Yuuri wanted, and that overcame any discomfort. 

“Yuuri,” Victor keened as he descended, until finally there was no more room for him to press. His thighs met Yuuri’s rump, tucked tight, and Yuuri hooked a leg around Victor to hold him in place. “Yuuri,” Victor whimpered again. He was overwhelmed, trembling. 

“It’s okay,” Yuuri whispered, and his greaseless hand sifted through Victor’s silver hair. “It’s okay. Does it feel good?”

Victor nodded into Yuuri’s neck, his hips hunching with a sudden infusion of human instinct.

“That’s it,” Yuuri whispered. “You can move. Start slow. Don’t go all the way out.”

There were… certain benefits to running an onsen with thin walls. Yuuri had heard a few liaisons, enough to piece together what he needed to know. But it was also why he’d never felt comfortable having his own. Not until now, hours away from his home and his family, alone with the spirit of the sky. His head tipped back as Victor moved, the sensation even stranger pulling out than going in, only to oscillate back to that fullness as Victor sank forward. 

“Yuuri, it feels—” Victor whispered against his neck. 

“Yes,” Yuuri agreed. His hips rose this time to meet Victor’s, and they both shuddered at the depth it gave them. “Victor.”

Yuuri reached back as if to grab something for purchase. He jostled the lamp and it sputtered out, leaving them in just the faint light of the moon through the rice paper panes. Victor’s silver hair shimmered, and Yuuri swore it was glowing brighter again, radiating even with only that thin luminescence available. In the dark, everything became sensation, pressure and release, friction stroking down the most sensitive nerves in Yuuri’s body, soft pleas in Victor’s melodic voice: gasps, whimpers, shivers. 

“Love,” Yuuri whispered, their rhythm rising together like the ocean tide, each roll of hips striking higher on the shore until Yuuri was certain they would crash upon the breakwater and send up white froth in furious patterns. 

“Yuuri,” Victor whimpered. “Yuuri.”

“Let go,” Yuuri whispered, grasping onto Victor’s hip, rising to catch him when he fell. “It’s okay, Victor. Love. Let go.”

—

Yuuri woke up to steady rapping on the door. He rose, feeling lighter than he had in ages. Rested. Energized. Absolutely in love. He opened the small window in the door, eyes peeking out to find the innkeeper’s son. 

“There’s a foreigner here to see you and your guest,” he said. 

“… To see _us_?”

“He calls himself Otabek.”


	20. Hope & Happenings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're approaching the end!

The cosmos, for its part, had always been indifferent: a collection of celestial entities long ago set in motion and exacting their courses through endless, empty darkness. The Sun’s reach extended far, but he merely steadied his twirling subjects in their dance and flirted, on occasion, with the planets’ jeweled satellites. He had set his light on many moons, but one above the rest gifted him with a son. 

A speck upon a speck in the grand scheme of things. 

The Sun, burning as it was, had no shortness of passion, yet beyond that there was little: only constant, unending fire. 

The Moon, too, remained removed, having long circled the earth and observed its comings and goings, cycle after cycle repeated unto infinity. At the highest level of society it was subjugation, revolution, balance, subjugation again, the few always finding ways to take advantage of the many, and the many, eventually, deciding they’d had enough. How predictable people were, and yet when one looked at a single person, what magic they could find. 

The Moon had found magic in the Sun, however briefly, but she had never known love. 

Her mare had, though, and her mare had created a son, a son for whom she showed such affection the Moon wondered her ill. The Moon watched her own son with the same care she showed any person: a detached fascination, nothing more. 

But the mare. 

Normally the Moon circled her satellite, riding her mare through light and dark and back again, ever watching. But when the mare saw her son, her only son, plummeting to his doom, she had thrashed and bucked so hard the Moon herself went flying, landing in a cloud of moondust as the mare shot to the surface. 

The Moon watched, not even outraged, merely astounded, as the mare made herself manifest and flew beneath her son just before he connected with the earth. 

“Why would you do a thing like that?” The Moon wondered. There were so many more people in the world. Pick a new one to watch. 

But the mare, the mare had made this one. 

—

Yuri saw the pegasus appear; through his tears it looked like any of the Bolts’ steeds, but then he saw the silver sheen to her dark coat, the streaks of moonlight in her mane, and the most beautiful horseshoes he’d ever seen upon her hooves. This wasn’t any steed. This was the Moon’s mare. Otabek’s mother. And she’d saved his life. 

Yuri sobbed, tears bursting forth in even greater relief as the mare alighted on the ground and Otabek crumpled beside her, leaning against her foreleg and crying himself. Yuri still couldn’t touch him, but that did not stop him from framing his arms around Otabek’s body as if he could embrace him. It didn’t stop Yuri from touching the Moon Mare, solid, and speaking such gratitude. 

“You saved him, you saved him,” Yuri cried, diamonds falling to the earth below. The Mare nudged Yuri with her muzzle, then bent and nuzzled Otabek, and then, as if drawn by a distant force, she took to the sky again. 

Otabek and Yuri both watched her go, side by side and yet realms apart. Yuri placed his hand over Otabek’s, through Otabek’s, praying he felt that faintest tingle. 

“Yuri?” Otabek whispered. 

They were on a rocky overlook, the ocean twinkling in the distance, cultivated and wild lands interspersed between their position and the sea. A light snow fell, but the gray across the horizon promised worse to come.

“I’m here,” Yuri said, brushing his hand through Otabek’s, up Otabek’s arm. Otabek shivered and touched where Yuri had touched. 

“I meant it, all that I said,” Otabek said. The cold had him wrapping his arms around himself. He had to get to a town, to get warmer clothes, before the storm hit. Again, Yuri touched Otabek’s hand, then his cheek. 

“This is where we needed to be,” Otabek said. “Japan.” Otabek touched his forehead, where the black brand sat. He rubbed at it, but there was no reaction, no change. “We should find the Sky Prince, but—I won’t be able to talk to anyone. I’m not a spirit anymore. I only know the language of my village.” 

Otabek stood, shaky at first, then solid, and Yuri flew up to get a better view. He could see a path nearby that snaked to one of the towns. 

“Guide me,” Otabek said, holding out his hand, and Yuri touched it from the direction he had to go. Otabek walked towards the tingle, and Yuri kept it that way, leading Otabek as quickly as they could go, winding down, around. He was dressed only in a simple tunic, no shoes, and the descent was a fight against frostbite. 

The first home they made it to, Otabek was welcomed on sight and ushered to a fire, and Yuri snuck invisibly in alongside him. Otabek was fed, and given shoes, and through a series of gestures and bows he found himself better equipped to continue his journey, and with a general direction towards the nearest city. The family placed food and drink into a pouch for Otabek, and then he continued on his way. 

— 

At the ryokan in Fukuoka, Yuuri went to wake Victor to meet their guest, but he thought better of it as he hovered in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of Victor’s chest and the occasional twitch of his fingers. Victor was supposed to dream, and this time, this early morning, was the best opportunity for those subconscious worlds to arise. Yuuri closed the door quietly behind him, leaving Victor to his slumber.

Yuuri struggled into his robe, unsure why he was having an issue with it, but finally got it to settle, if awkwardly. He opened the front door, surprised to see two people instead of one—and more surprised that one had wings. 

“Spirit!” Yuuri gasped. “You must be here for the prince. How are you here on the surface? With wings?”

Both people looked shocked.

“You’re a citizen?” the black-winged spirit stuttered.

“Me?” Yuuri asked. “N-no, no. I’m just a normal—” 

But the black-winged spirit pointed over Yuuri’s shoulder. Yuuri yelped in shock as he glanced back. 

He had _wings_. “Wh-what?!” Yuuri gasped. They were similar to Victor’s, a rainbow of color, but where Victor’s looked like shards of iridescent glass or a dragonfly’s wings, Yuuri’s looked more like pure color, a radiating plasma of various hues. “What? How did this—” He stood there, mouth flapping in the wind, until Yuri cleared his throat.

“My name is Yuri, and this is Otabek,” Yuri said. “He was my steed until—it’s not important. It’s a long story. He can’t see or hear me.”

Yuuri was far too busy trying to figure out how he’d gotten wings, how he’d become part spirit, to respond right away. 

“I was human,” Yuuri swore. “The Sky Prince and I—” 

Ah. Yuuri realized it with a beet-red blush. He had part of the Sky Prince in him now. Was that what had changed him? Infused him with spirit? 

“Where is he?” Otabek asked. 

“You can understand me?” Yuuri blinked. 

“So you’re not entirely a spirit,” Yuri said. “You’re… in between. You can walk both realms.”

This was way, way too much for Yuuri. He was just a normal person, just an innkeeper’s son, just the man who shoveled snow and cleaned the hot springs and washed the dishes for guests. 

“Please, where is the Sky Prince?” Otabek asked. 

“He’s asleep. We’re trying to get him to dream, so that he can return to his realm. To the—the city.” That was what the Sky Prince called it. “You should not wake him. But—please, come in. Keep your voices down.”

Yuri and Otabek both sat, side by side. 

“Tell him I love him,” Yuri said abruptly to Yuuri, gesturing over to Otabek. “Please.” Yuuri’s hand went through the table, as if to illustrate that he wasn’t fully there. 

Yuuri looked to Otabek. “He says he loves you.” 

Otabek’s mouth shifted the barest fraction, and yet it made the difference between a straight face and one softened with the greatest affection. “I know.” Otabek turned his hand up on the table, and Yuri laid his on top of it, balancing it in the air above Otabek’s skin. 

Yuuri glanced over his shoulder again, at his wings, spreading them out like a test, wanting to give Yuri and Otabek’s intimacy a moment. When he turned back, he noticed the black mark on Otabek’s forehead. 

“What happened to you?” Yuuri asked. 

“There was a trap,” Otabek said. “A piece of metal, blacker than a starless night, on the inside of my bridle when I was a pegasus. When it pressed against my skin… I lost all of my connection to the city. I became human, solely and purely. I fell out of the clouds in the city and nearly died.” 

“So you need to find a way back to the city, too,” Yuuri said. “You could try to dream. Yuri could return to the city and … tell that other spirit… Christopher?” 

“Perhaps,” Otabek said, though he didn’t seem hopeful.

“No one has ever—this has never happened. Whatever this is, this blackness…” Yuri frowned. 

Everyone in the room turned as heavy footsteps plodded outside—not the hall, but the window to the garden. In a sudden fury of wind and splintered wood, an armored figure crashed into the room. He looked more like a shadow, a silhouette, for there was no glint or glean of light off his armor, as if light itself was sucked into the void of it. The three shot backwards, staring.

“Where is the Sky Prince?” The figure demanded, voice like the crack of an anvil. 

“Not here!” Yuri said. “Be gone!” He stood in front of Yuuri and Otabek, concealing them both with a sudden dark cloud as lightning crackled off his fingertips. He pulled a bolt from the sky and hurtled it at the figure. 

The black armor swallowed the lightning as if it was nothing, leaving no thunder, no crash, not even a fizzle. Yuri took a step backwards as frigid wind blew in behind the armored stranger. 

“Where is the prince,” he repeated.

Yuuri couldn’t stand it any longer. He dashed through the dark nimbus cloud, towards the bedroom, but when he shoved aside the door, the bed was empty. 

Victor was gone. 

— 

Yuuri was glowing. Color streamed from him as he danced across the ice, and Victor was with him every step, a beat of his wings to keep up with Yuuri’s every stroke. As they glided together, the light collected into two dazzling clusters of light on Yuuri’s back. No, Victor realized as they leapt into the air, circling and creating a rainbow in their wake: they were wings.

They were wings, and Yuuri was color manifest.

“I knew you were special,” Victor called to him. “I knew—” 

“Only because of you,” Yuuri smiled in return. Yuuri’s smile felt like spring sunshine, like tender heat caressing all over Victor’s body. 

Yuuri was on Victor’s body, or was Victor on his? They were still moving together, but in time now, their rhythm circular, undulating, and oh, _oh_ —

“Your Highness.”

Victor shrieked as Yuuri’s image was replaced with Toph’s. 

“Come home.” 

—

As Toph pressed himself into the dream, Phichit held his breath. He watched Toph confront the Sky Prince, and the next moment two flashes of light lit up the Dreamery. 

The Sky Prince sat on the ground in a pool of rainbow light, his long silver hair mussed from its pins, but otherwise, he looked safe and healthy. His wings flapped and in an instant he shot to the ceiling and struck his head. 

“Ow!” He gasped. “I’m so _light._ ”

“Your Highness!” Phichit cried out, and without thinking he hugged the Sky Prince as tight as he could. 

The Sky Prince responded with a powerful sneezing fit, sneezing, and sneezing and finally Toph had to carry the Sky Prince upstairs. 

“Toph,” Victor said, laying his head on Toph’s bare chest and wiping his snot off on Toph’s shoulder. “I am in love.”

“Don’t be silly,” Toph said. “That’s for Laeo and Guang Hong.”

They got to the mosaic of the sun and the moon, where all of the crystals should have been, guiding the Bolts home. 

But the crystals were gray. 

Shattered. 

And the castle was still. 

“Toph?” Victor whispered. “What happened?”


	21. Void & Chaos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dun! Getting towards the end ~

— EARLIER —

In the Sky Prince’s bedroom, Seung Gil was the first one struck down. A sword made of starless night hit him flat across the side of his face, and the result was instant. He fell to the ground, the cloudstone cracking beneath his sudden weight. His wings vanished in black smoke, and for Seung Gil the world around him disappeared; leaving him floating miles above the earth, stories and stories above a collection of white clouds. 

“Seung Gil!” Minami screamed, but Seung Gil couldn’t hear him. 

Seung Gil was human, with a black scar across the side of his face where the flat of the blade had hit him.

A monster peeled from the shadow of the room, the silhouette of a man wielding a terrible sword, dressed in armor so dark not even light escaped it. 

Emil fell next, jumping in front of the sword as it came for Minami. This time it was not the flat of the blade, but the ragged edge that connected with Emil, cutting through his fancy indigo outfit and only when it touched his skin did he tumble and bleed, suddenly human.

“Where is the Sky Prince?” 

The armored figure pointed the tip of his sword at Minami, no longer caring about the human Emil and Seung Gil, or the blood that stained the cloudstone indigo. 

“H-he isn’t here!” Minami cried. “He got trapped on the surface—”

“LIES!” Another swipe of his sword and Minami joined Seung Gil and Emil, a deep gash on his shoulder. The three could see each other, but when Minami cried out for Emil and Seung Gil there was no understanding on their features, no sense to their response. They couldn’t recognize a word each other said. 

That left Laeo and Guang Hong as the remaining citizens, clutching each other tightly in the doorway. Guang Hong was crying against Laeo’s chest, and Laeo was holding him dear, tucked against him, arms a shield. 

“It’s true!” Laeo shouted through his tears, staring at the blackest black figure. “The Sky Prince left us these puzzles and we can’t even find him.”

The figure raised his sword high, intent not merely on cutting their flesh, but ending their lives. Both Laeo and Guang Hong turned away, burrowing into each other, and they didn’t breathe until the sword shattered in a flash of gold, bouncing off an invisible barrier around their huddled bodies. 

“NO!” The figure let out a furious roar. He stared at the broken hilt before casting his now useless weapon aside. Instead, he gestured with pointed, sickly dark greaves: “I will find your prince, and I will see the sun’s perfect order cast into chaos and void.” He passed Laeo and Guang Hong, leaping over the rail and down thirty stories, destroying every crystal he touched on the way. 

— 

Only when the sounds of destruction were a distant echo did Laeo and Guang Hong look up, realizing the danger had passed and somehow, somehow they had survived. They ran towards their fallen friends, but when they reached to help them, their hands just passed through Emil and Minami’s bodies. Seung Gil, whose injury was superficial, crawled very carefully to Emil, feeling his way along the floor as if worried it couldn’t hold his weight. He ripped apart his cloak, tearing it into strips, and started to bandage Emil’s wound. 

“What happened?” Guang Hong cried, kneeling beside Emil, trying to help Seung Gil stop the leaking blood. But Seung Gil didn’t even respond, and Guang Hong’s hands moved straight through him. 

“They can’t hear us,” Laeo said, putting a hand on Guang Hong’s shoulders. “Or see us.” 

“What happened?!” Guang Hong cried again.

“I don’t know,” Laeo said. “But… whoever that was… we need to warn the Sky Prince.” Laeo gingerly tugged Guang Hong’s hand. “We have to tell Phichit and Toph.” 

Still crying, Guang Hong left his three friends, who, even in their lack of language, had at least huddled together, trying to keep warm so far above the ground, with nothing but their silly outfits and the support of barely-held-together cloudstone. Laeo wrapped an arm around him, helping him down the thirty flights, and missing entirely the two story globe in the prince’s study, or the chaotic black storms seeded across the continents.

—

Everyone left in the city had been summoned to the Dreamery, to help keep an eye out for dreams from the Sky Prince or the human, Yuuri, who had found him. 

“There is a man— a man in armor so dark it could swallow the night itself—“ Laeo tried to explain to Toph. “When his sword hit Seung Gil… Seung Gil’s wings disappeared. He couldn’t see or understand us and our bodies moved through his. He had black across his skin where the sword touched him. I think—“ 

“He turned human,” Toph said, his voice even in a way that betrayed far more fear than his usual golden tones. “The others?”

“They’re trapped, on the cloudstone, in the prince’s bedroom. They’re freezing and wounded and have no way to get down. If they go off the cloudstone…” Laeo shuddered. 

Toph had a healthy enough imagination. 

“What do we do?” Guang Hong whimpered.

“We wait for them to fall asleep,” Toph said. “… and we hope that we can find their dreams.” 

— 

Jacques waited nearly an hour for Yuri and Otabek to appear at the pasture so they could start their mission, flying down to Japan, but the pair never showed. He went to the stables, to Yuri’s home, but there was no sign of them, only an odd disturbance in the cloudy bottom of Otabek’s stall, as if the sweet grass and hay had been pulled down into the cloud’s belly. Jacques didn’t think anything of it at first, but as morning turned into afternoon, he went back to the stall and studied the pattern. 

It wasn’t until he went to the castle that he put everything together. 

Toph explained what had happened in the prince’s bedroom, the strange sword that made citizens turn human, and how Emil and Seung Gil and Minami were trapped in the sky, saved only by the fact that clouds and weather were the few things that crossed realms, and cloudstone was simply condensed cloud. 

“…I think Otabek and Yuri fell,” Jacques whispered. “They never showed up to go to the surface, and when I went to the stall…” he retold his story in harrowed tones, unable to get the image out of his head: Yuri falling, falling, falling, to horrific end. 

There was no time to mourn, though Toph’s eyes closed for a long moment. 

One couldn’t sleep when they were plummeting to the earth, and even then: pulling someone out of a dream was just theory, utterly untested. They had no way of knowing if it would even—

“Toph!” Phichit cried out, rushing through the Dreamery with a bubble supported on moonsilver tongs. “It’s the Sky Prince!” 

— 

The Sky Prince’s return felt like the first good thing to happen in the city since his disappearance. Toph prayed it would be enough. He stood with the prince on the tiled mosaic, studying the shattered crystals as he recounted the past two weeks. 

“And now Emil, Seung Gil, and Minami are human and trapped,” Toph said. “And we have no way to get them down safely, or back to our realm.”

The Sky Prince considered this, then flew, up and up, to the railing and into his ruined room. On the floor was the shattered sword, each piece of it like a black hole, an unassailable shadow. The prince stepped carefully around them, gathering the crystals on his robe to keep them far from the void metal. Then he saw them. From his perspective, it just looked like Seung Gil and Minami and Emil were huddled on the floor, shaking, blue-lipped, and yet he knew Toph had said the entire castle barely existed for them. 

“Earl!” the Sky Prince called, not expecting a response, but Emil looked up at him and his eyes went wide. 

“Your Highness!” Emil called, and when Seung Gil and Minami looked over they, too, startled in surprise. 

The Sky Prince approached them, could touch them. He took a sunstone from his hearth and brought it to them, willing the stone’s heat to warm them. Perhaps his time with Yuuri had made him more human, had allowed him to touch both realms. 

“We’re doing everything in our power to help you,” the Sky Prince swore. 

“What does he want from you?” Emil asked. 

“I do not know,” the Sky Prince said. The only reason anyone had gotten upset with him before was how much he enjoyed glitter, but this seemed… the Sky Prince’s eyes lit suddenly. This seemed like a human thing to do: to feel so strongly that one would be driven to madness. The madness to hurt others. The madness to destroy. 

But what human would have any reason to hurt the Sky Prince?

“Please,” the Sky Prince said, “stay strong.” He left the sunstone beside them. “I must check on the globe.” 

— 

Yuuri scanned the room, but there was no sign of Victor, only rumpled sheets, as if Victor had simply— 

“It worked,” Yuuri whispered, and then the ceiling tore off the room, wind raking its claws against Yuuri’s back and lightning strikes setting the bamboo frame aflame. Yuri was battling with the stranger, trying to cut off his path as he sought Victor while simultaneously keeping dark clouds shielded around Yuuri and Otabek. 

It was chaos. 

Yuuri ran back through the storm until he found Otabek, leaving Yuri to distract the shadow manifest. 

“Come on,” Yuuri said, taking Otabek’s hand and pulling him from the ruins of the room. The inn was alive with panicked guests fleeing the sounds of destruction: the horrific winds, the cold of the storm, and now the fire as well. 

“That man—“ Otabek started, ducking under a fallen beam as they tried to avoid the crowds. “His armor—“ 

Yuuri grabbed Otabek and held him back as the door before them burst open. For Otabek, it was nothing but a torrent of lightning bolts, but Yuuri could see Yuri struggling wildly against the stranger. 

“That armor. That’s void metal,” Otabek whispered as they hid around a corner. “It can only be forged during an eclipse. It rips spirits out of their realm. It destroys. That’s what turned me human.”

“How do you know?” Yuuri whispered. 

“My father told me,” Otabek said as they tried another route. “He said it shouldn’t exist. That it was the most dangerous metal in any realm.”

“Did he tell you how to stop it?” Yuuri asked, desperate, as they ran out into the blizzard proper. The storm ravaged the city, but its nexus was undoubtedly the man in void armor, and Yuri’s combative lightning created a chilling sight, silhouettes flashing with every strike. 

“No,” Otabek’s teeth grit together. “He didn’t know any other light he could forge to defeat it.” 

Yuuri turned to keep running, but Otabek grabbed his wrist: “Yuuri. You have wings now. Use them. Go make sure the Sky Prince is alright. And get help.” 

“What about you?” Yuuri asked. 

“I can survive.” 

Yuuri looked back at his wings, up at the storm. Tentatively, he willed the wings to expand, and when they obeyed his impulses like a second set of arms, he tried to flap. His wings scooped through the air as if on instinct, and then suddenly Yuuri was flying—terrified, but flying. 

“Head north,” Otabek shouted. “Get above the clouds, and just keep flying north!” 

North, Yuuri thought. If he could escape the storm alive, he could do that. 

“Otabek,” Yuuri called, just before flying off. 

Otabek turned.

“Try to dream.”

— 

The globe looked a black ink bubble had burst and freckled the surface with pox. Shards of void metal stuck out from the earth, acting as loci for storms the size and ferocity of which the Sky Prince had never seen. He wanted to touch them, to rip them out and bury the void as far away from the city as he could, but his fingers drew back just before they connected, remembering. 

When he tried to blow and brush the clouds back into their place, they barely budged, too consumed by the magnetic pull of the void, the vortex of it. 

The Sky Prince prided himself in his ingenuity, and soon he had a pair of sungold pliers. He reached out to grasp the void metal shard, but the sungold just… went in and never came back out, was instantly erased by it. The Sky Prince stared at the wrecked ends of the pliers in horror. This was far, far worse than he imagined. 

There had to be something that could touch it. Something that could move it. How had a man worn armor made of this metal? There must have been something—anything—protecting him. 

That was it! 

The Sky Prince was about to fly back down to the Dreamery when he saw exactly who he was looking for. Guang Hong and Laeo were there, fretting as they watched their three friends still huddled, though the sunstone did seem to have taken the blue color out of their lips. 

“Laeo. Guang Hong,” the Sky Prince said. “Toph said the sword broke when it tried to hit you, is that true?”

“Well… we didn’t really see it…” Laeo admitted. 

“I was hiding in Laeo’s arms,” Guang Hong said. “But then there was a flash and the sword bounced away.”

“You two are the secret,” the Sky Prince said.

“What?” Laeo asked. 

“What do the two of you have, that no one else here does?” 

“Crystals?” Guang Hong tilted his head. 

“More than that.”


	22. Light & Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Realized the final chapter was almost 5k, so decided to split it in half for faster editing. Finale tomorrow and Epilogue for Christmas??? :D

Yuri fought. 

He aimed his bolts for the chinks in the stranger’s armor, for the rare glimpses of black cloth beneath blacker-than-black metal plates. But lightning had its own will, difficult to aim and control, and the plates drew the energy towards them like magnets. Twin storms battled around the pair, wreaking havoc on the city below: gates and fencing blowing away, roofs displaced, and garden trees snapped in half. On and on they raged, Yuri constantly trying to fly higher, to get the stranger away from the surface. But Yuri was getting tired, and the stranger struck closer with every attack. 

“Tell me where he IS!” the stranger bellowed, grabbing for Yuri with his dark greaves. Yuri tried to dodge, but his wings were battered by the black storm. The armor caught the tip of his wings, and wherever it touched, the feather disappeared, eaten by the void of the metal. By luck alone the metal missed Yuri’s skin; he remained in the spirit realm, but that didn’t stop his descent.

Without his flight feathers, all Yuri could do was desperately try to slow his velocity as he spiraled back down towards the earth. 

He wanted to cry out for Otabek, but he didn’t want to draw the stranger’s attention to him. Instead, Yuri enveloped himself in thick black clouds, creating a visual barrier between him and the stranger. He caught sight of Otabek, helping up a fallen guest as they both fled the storm, and at the last moment Yuri careened towards him and gave one great flap to try and break his fall. He passed through Otabek, landing against the snow with a spinning, dizzy head.

Otabek felt it.

He stopped, reaching out towards the tingle. 

“Yuri?” he whispered. “Yuri? Are you alright?” 

Yuri felt sore and achey everywhere, wasn’t sure he could move his legs, but he reached his hand out, tapping Otabek’s hand twice. 

Otabek felt the shape of Yuri’s hand from the tingles, tracing it to his body. The wind flayed Otabek’s back, but he wouldn’t budge. Not without Yuri. Yuri wanted to tell him to go, to run, to get far away from the storm, but all he could do was reach for Otabek’s cheek, brushing his fingers against his skin. “Otabek…” Yuri was so tired. He could hear the storm getting worse, the stranger coming closer. “Run…” But Otabek couldn’t hear him. 

“You idiot,” Yuri whispered, leaning up and placing his lips against the black mark on Otabek’s forehead, “Run.” 

— 

“Run,” Otabek heard, and suddenly the tingle against his forehead wasn’t a tingle, but the chilled touch of Yuri’s lips, and Yuri was there, in front of him, one wing with sheared feathers, his leg awkwardly bent. 

He didn’t have time to think. Otabek picked Yuri up in his arms, ignoring the jaw-dropped expression on Yuri’s face, and he ran. 

“How…?” Yuri asked, touching Otabek’s forehead, where the black mark had disappeared. “How did…?

Otabek stumbled, but not enough to drop Yuri or wind up on his knees. He struggled to his feet, switching Yuri awkwardly around to his back. 

Yuri understood immediately, wrapping an arm over Otabek’s shoulder as Otabek transformed beneath him, vast black wings expanding. Yuri buried his hand in Otabek’s mane, holding on fast as Otabek leapt into the air and took them headlong into the storm. 

“Take us home,” Yuri said. “We have to protect the prince.” 

— 

The City, even from a distance, shone like an iridescent crystal, all the colors of the rainbow encapsulated in the buildings and the leaves of the trees and the castle that towered over it all. Yuuri’s breath caught in his chest as he approached, as the city gained resolution and he could pick out individual creatures: colorful running fluff that looked like sheep, an almost terrifyingly large pearl shape swimming beneath the surface of the lake. It was beautiful, and Yuuri had no idea how Victor could have fallen in love with his dream if this was Victor’s every day reality. 

Or, for that matter, how the appearance of ice skating could compare, even in the slightest degree, to the sensation of flying. Yuuri wanted to soar, to dive, to try out every variation of how his wings and body could move; even in such danger, the elation of flight nearly overpowered him. Victor could fly whenever he wanted? And yet he was impressed with Yuuri’s skating? 

Another time. He’d worry about that another time. 

For now, he tried to figure out where to go to reach Victor. Luckily, it was hard to miss the Sky Prince flying from the balcony of the castle down towards a little pink house, two magenta-decked spirits in his wake. 

“Victor!” Yuuri shouted, and when Victor turned he lost his wind in shock and tumbled through the air for a second before recovering. He rushed Yuuri and tackled him in midair, both of them spin-falling together until they neared the clouds. They separated enough to land, and then Victor was hugging Yuuri again. 

“What happened?! How did you get wings?! Did Toph pull you through a dream?!” Victor exclaimed. 

Yuuri flushed. “No, I think it was—” he cleared his throat. “Uhm— when we…” 

“Tried to make a family!” Victor beamed. 

Yuuri choked. “Yes, that. But— Victor— there was a man who appeared in armor that was—”

“Blacker than a starless night?” Victor asked. 

“Yes,” Yuuri said, brow knitting. 

“He’s looking for me; I don’t know why,” Victor said. “He was here in the castle.” 

“Otabek said his armor was made of void metal, which was the — the light of an eclipse?” Yuuri tried to remember. “I asked if he knew how to defeat it, but he didn’t know any other kind of light…” Victor’s face split into the biggest smile, wide enough that Yuuri was worried for his sanity. “Victor. That’s not good. It’s undefeatable.” 

“No,” Victor said. He turned around to face the two magenta spirits that had just landed behind them. “Not if we know the right light.”

— 

They pulled crystals from everywhere. Chandeliers throughout the city were plucked bare, ceiling decorations were pulled from their braces, and Laeo and Guang Hong brought even the smallest paired crystals in their pouches. All in all, they had enough to nearly fill the funnel of mirrors at the Mirror Forge, each pair spread out so that its light stretched from one corner to the other of the opening, all stacked and latticed into an odd crystal chimney. Yuuri watched, mystified, as the three spirits set up the structure. 

“It’s perfect!” Victor declared. “… Except for one problem.” 

“What is it?” Laeo asked. 

“No one’s seen Altin. We don’t have anyone who can work the forge,” Victor said. 

“That’s not true,” came Yuri’s voice as a black pegasus alighted on the cloud beside them. “I can.” 

— 

If void metal came from the eclipse, from the disturbance of order, from a nothing deeper than nothing, then what came from the colored crystals, the very manifestation of two souls twined together, had to be the opposite: the chest-bursting fullness, the radiant elation, the fizzing, cheek-flushing feeling of love and being loved. The metal that poured out when Yuri lifted the partition was a shining mix of colors, iridescent and bold with flashes of neon.

“It’s so beautiful,” Guang Hong whispered. “Like all the crystals stirred into soup.” 

“Alright,” Yuri said, watching the molten metal flow into the ingot molds. “What do you need?”

“Greaves,” Victor insisted. “Something I can use to grab the void metal. … Then shields, so we can protect ourselves.” 

“Greaves,” Yuri said, exhaling. “Okay.” Another breath. “Okay.” Otabek had flipped human again, doing what he could to help. He set his hand on Yuri’s shoulder, and that steadiness was all Yuri needed to get to work. As the sound of hammering rose up around them, all of the gathered spirits recalled what they could about the void metal stranger. What he’d done to Emil and Seung Gil and Minami. What he’d done to the ryokan where Yuuri was staying, and the way his armor consumed Yuri’s lightning strikes. They talked, too, about how Laeo and Guang Hong had survived, and how Yuri’s kiss had dispelled the dark mark on Otabek’s forehead. 

“It’s love,” Victor smiled. “Love protected you both, love removed the void scar, and this—” Victor gestured to the rainbow metal, “is how we can protect ourselves from any more of it.”

“Do you think it will heal Emil and Seung Gil and Minami?” Laeo asked. 

“I don’t know,” Victor admitted. “But I hope. Otherwise… maybe Otabek can fly them to the surface, and we’ll let them find love there.” 

“That could take a long time for Seung Gil,” Guang Hong mumbled. 

“Yuri,” Otabek piped. “How long do you think it will take to make that glove?”

“Another hour, hopefully,” Yuri said. “I’m only making one, and it’s going to be really, really simple.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Why?”

A powerful gust of wind blew in through the open window, making the shutters clack against the sunstone walls. “Because the storm is coming.”

— 

The closer the storm came, the more the forge shook. 

“Otabek,” the Sky Prince said, “You have to go save the citizens trapped in my quarters. Take them back to the surface. Someplace safe. They were turned human.” 

Otabek nodded, transforming back into a horse the moment he left the building. Several minutes later, a gust struck the building, so powerful that the foundation cracked and a shattering sound came from above them. When Yuri opened the partition to get enough metal for the final piece of his project, the chute was barren. 

“I didn’t get enough,” Yuri said. He closed and opened the partition, but there just wasn’t enough light coming through the mirrors to make molten metal. It was Victor who went outside, who saw the chimney of crystals not just toppled from the roof but destroyed, their twinkling centers deadened and gray. That meant the stranger… the man in the void armor… 

Victor ran back inside. 

“We need something stronger,” Victor said. “All the colors of the sky, all the colors of love…” 

Yuuri had been in the corner of the forge for most of the conversation, carefully stretching and tucking in his wings to distract himself from the terrifying sound of the storm outside. He looked up at Victor’s words, though.

“It sounds like my dream,” Yuuri murmured quietly. 

“Yes,” Victor said. “Yes, exactly like that.” 

Yuuri got up, taking Victor’s hands. “I… I have an idea,” he said beneath his breath. “Will you trust me?”


	23. Again, Love

Ever since he’d gotten close to the city, Yuuri had felt it: this power inside of himself, this latent thing suddenly stirring to life. He’d not been certain of the sensation, wondering if it was merely an effect of being close to the home of so many celestial beings, but the more he’d sat with it, the more he realized it was something internal, something within himself that had perhaps always been there, and was only now coming to fruition.

“I need you to keep the skies clear,” Yuuri said, “Just for a little while.” 

Victor nodded, leaning forward and taking Yuuri’s cheek in his palm for a kiss. Pushing the forge door open, they both walked outside and Victor held up his arms. Gritting his teeth, he cast apart the storm clouds and tamped down the wind. The whole sky seemed to tremble with competing forces, but eventually the clouds gave way, even if only temporarily, even if only slightly. 

It was enough. 

Yuuri flew into the sky, trying to feel out the edges of this thing inside him. It felt almost like he did when he was skating. No—when he was dreaming of skating. 

…. Why not try? 

Yuuri stroked forward, flying as if he was skating. As he did his arms extended and he let go, willing the power he felt inside, the color, to stream from him like it always did in dreams. He danced and pivoted across the sky, leaving a ribbon of color in his wake that slowly undulated and wavered, lighting up the city in dazzling hues. He flew as far as he could, then turned and made a second streak that snaked nearby, the first one greenish and yellow, the second veering purple and pink. 

The Aurora.

When it filled the sky, Yuuri returned to the forge. He saw the void metal stranger the split second before he attacked Victor, grabbing the Sky Prince’s throat in one black-gloved hand, his void-metal greaves discarded. 

“No!” Yuuri screamed, diving towards his love, but the stranger held up Victor by his neck and put the metal knuckles of his other hand near Victor’s cheek in threat. 

One touch. 

All it would take was one touch to send Victor spiraling through the clouds to his doom. Yuuri dragged his wings through the air, coming to a stop with his hands open-palmed towards the stranger. Victor was still looking at the sky, still trying to keep the faint, undulating waves of color visible between the clouds, so Yuri could capture their light. Laeo peeked from the window of the forge, though Guang Hong hid his head away, unable to watch should anything happen to their prince. 

Victor held as still as he could, wings tucked against his back, white and gold uniform dotted with snowflakes. 

While the storm raged around them, everyone stayed frozen, waiting. 

"Sun!" the stranger called to the sky. "Moon! I have your child!" 

Victor's brow knit. His parents?

He looked up at the sky, colored with Yuuri's grand light, and could see neither the sun nor moon. He'd forgotten entirely about the eclipse in the flurry of all that had happened. Even in the small window Victor was able to keep open, the sky was darkening: not from the storm, but as the moon and the sun came together. 

There should have been fanfare. There should have been horns blowing and glitter raining and the entire rainbow court gathered in their very best attire with their pegasi dripping light crystals, phoenix plumes, and sashes of dewsilk. Instead, the Sun and Moon arrived in the midst of a stand-off, starting as thin apparitions that increased in solidity until they were there, right in front of the duel. 

"Mom!" Victor called. "Dad!"

The Sun had long golden hair drawn up and fanned out in a halo, with golden eyes and obsidian skin that had vague iridescent flashes of the universe: a galaxy shimmering just beneath the surface, as if he was the cosmos itself, barely contained. His pegasus was white with golden streaks in its tail and mane and golden feathering near its hooves, a golden horn arching from its forehead. 

The Moon looked much more like Victor, or rather, Victor took after his mother. She had a perfect circular bob of silver hair, like a full moon itself, and pale shimmery skin draped in black cloaks. Her pegasus looked flustered beneath her, pawing and neighing, rearing up. 

"What are you doing?" the Moon asked, her voice sonorous yet strange, like a far away song.

The stranger stared at her pegasus, whose reins she held tightly, forcing the beast to stillness. 

"You. Took. Everything," the stranger screamed. 

Again, the Moon's pegasus reared, her horseshoes flashing in the lingering light of Yuuri's aurora. 

"You took my love!" the stranger shouted. "Then you took my son!"  The Moon Mare threw off the Moon at long last and raced to the stranger. "No!" he shouted, dropping Victor and using his gloved hand to reach out to stop her. "Do not interfere."

Victor landed on the cloud, trying to scoot away and back, but Altin stepped on his wrist, pinning him.

"Altin," the Moon said, and the stranger removed his helmet, darker than the starless night. The Mastersmith stood there, his chest heaving with every breath, his eyes alive with malice. 

"You took everything from me," Altin said again. "And now I will take what's yours."

He lifted up his helmet, ready to pelt it down onto Victor's body. 

"No!" Yuuri screamed, and in one beautiful, colorful blur he threw himself in the way, clasping onto Victor's shoulders as the void metal collided with his back. Just before it could strike Yuuri's skin, there was a flash of gold, and the helmet shattered into a hundred small pieces that fell through the cloud to the world below.

Altin used his boot next, kicking towards the pair, and again it struck an invisible barrier and shattered. 

"Don't let go," Yuuri whispered to Victor, holding as tightly as he could, the rainbow of his wings wrapping around Victor. 

"Never," Victor swore, and they endured Altin's onslaught. He attacked them with knuckles, knees, trying to rip Yuuri and Victor apart, but every strike only resulted in more of his plating shattering.

Finally, when Altin's armor was in ruins, the Moon Mare threw out her hooves over Victor and Yuuri, snorting in Altin's face. 

"They did this to us, to us!" Altin cried out. "Why are you stopping me? They took us from our son!"

"Father." Otabek had finished carrying the three now-human citizens to the surface, leaving them on the doorstep of Yuuri’s onsen, and returned to the city. He walked towards the commotion, slow and steady, like trying not to spook a wild stallion. 

The Sun and the Moon had hardly moved, not even to interfere and save their son, but their eyes followed Otabek as he touched a hand to his mother's back, fingers tangling in her mane. He turned back into his pegasus form, shifting into a shadowy stallion himself, and laid his neck against hers, the pair exchanging a fond nuzzle.

When he shifted human again, he stared at Altin. "I'm here." 

"How," Altin said, reaching to touch Otabek's cheek, but Otabek pulled back, out of range. 

"You need to end this," Otabek said. “You nearly killed me — would have, if it weren’t for mother.” He touched his forehead, and Altin’s face went pale as a sheet. “You've hurt so many people. The only reason I'm here is because of love. Your love. Mother’s love Yuri's love. But now all you are doing is causing pain and suffering.” He gestured to the cloud, or through it, to the busy world below and the storms leaving towns and cities in ruins.

Altin shook his head, throwing a hand towards the celestial rulers: "All they care about is order, everything running to perfection." He glared at the Sun and the Moon. "There's no room for love in their world. Love is messy, imperfect, and chaotic. They love nothing—not even him.” He cast an aggressive finger towards Victor, who recoiled as if he’d been struck, “—And that is why it has to end."

“That’s not true,” Victor whispered. “They love me. My parents—”

“You really believe a few storms could throw off the mechanics of my system?” the Sun interrupted, climbing from his mount. The cloud stretched to meet him, glowing where his polished boots connected with its white surface, rising like mist off a lake. 

“No,” Altin agreed. “… But the void can. And I scattered it all across your globe.” 

The Sun stayed still for only a moment before climbing back on his pegasus, turning the beast towards the castle and kicking it into motion. 

“Wait!” Victor called, but the Sun flew onward. The Sky Prince watched his father land on the balcony, and turned instead to his mother. “You love me, don’t you? We’re… we’re family, the three of us.” 

The Moon turned slowly to face Victor. “You are our son,” she confirmed. “We enjoy watching your care with the earth. You are performing admirably in your station.” 

“Yes, but—“ Victor’s mouth opened and closed. “But love… you know love, don’t you?” 

“My son, of course I know the concept,” the Moon said. She was walking towards her mare, who stood beside Altin and Otabek, a dark trio. Victor stood frozen, trembling against Yuuri’s tender hold.

Altin took off one of his few remaining pieces of armor—a pauldron—and held it like a small shield or threat against the Moon. “I told you. They don’t know anything of love. You were the product of a brief passion, if anything.” 

Victor’s head shook faintly, but his nails dug into Yuuri’s robe.

The Moon grasped the reins of her mare, pulling the pegasus away, but Otabek stepped between them. “Let her choose. You never gave anyone a choice, just did what you thought was right.” 

“It is what’s right,” the Moon said. “It’s like you said. Love is inefficient, messy, it comes and it goes, it morphs and it changes, it fills people’s heads with silly ideas. There are millions and millions of people on this globe and yet humans have the gall to think they can find the perfect one. There is no such thing as perfection with love.”

“And yet all of us who have felt love would choose it a thousand times over your perfect order,” Otabek said.

The Moon gave a fond laugh, “Oh, human, you say that only because you haven’t been hurt by it. Because your parents haven’t died or left you, because your lover hasn’t cheated with another, because you haven’t been together long enough for the love to fade or morph into something you don’t recognize and no longer want to deal with. I have watched thousands of humans over two hundred thousand years. Do not be so arrogant as to think you are not part of that pattern.”

“I am part of that pattern, and if my love changes then I will change too, and if my Yuri wants to leave me then I will mourn and weep, but even just the brief time we’ve had together is worth more to me than the weight of the world,” Otabek said. 

The Moon Mare tugged her reins out of the Moon’s hands, going to Altin’s side. 

The Moon stared at them, then turned on Victor and Yuuri. 

“And is that how you feel, my son? Have you been infected by this human weakness as well?”

Victor’s face twisted in disgust—not towards himself, or the idea of love, but this revelation about his mother. His hands shook now with anger, and diamonds dotted the corners of his eyes. When he spoke, it was choked and thin, stretched between the acidic bile he felt in his gut. “I spent. My entire life. Waiting for you and dad to appear. Hoping that I’d done something—anything—that would make you happy. I spent— this eternity here, in your perfect world, in this perfect city, always feeling like something was missing.”

“Of course it was,” the Moon dismissed. “The sky had no aurora. Now you’ve fixed that, my son. You did very well.” She gave a careless gesture towards Yuuri.

“No, mother,” Victor grimaced. “That aurora? That color in the sky?” Victor pointed. With the eclipse darkening the sky, the aurora was all the brighter, blazes of color stretching out above them. “That’s our love, that’s what Yuuri and I made, together. If love hadn’t existed we never could have created it. You call love imperfect but what about Guang Hong and Laeo? Even in your perfect city, you had them.”

Laeo and Guang Hong looked up at the sound of their names, stepping shyly from the forge, where the sound of hammering still echoed with the storm. 

“Of course,” the Moon said again. “But their love is perfect, their love is true love. You really think you and this ‘Yuuri’ could activate crystals with whatever it is you have between you?”

“We don’t have to!” Victor said. “Everything about ‘true love’— that’s just you trying to make everything perfect again! But love doesn’t have to be perfect! It doesn’t have to live up to your standards, it doesn’t have to last forever and never change and capture light in crystals. Love can just be love. It can be whatever it is. It can be all the colors of the rainbow.” Victor looked up at the sky, and then into Yuuri’s eyes, and repeated in a soft voice: “Love can be exactly what it is, between exactly who it’s with. It can be messy, it can be hard, it can hurt, and it can give us wings.” Yuuri flushed, staring right back at Victor. 

A sudden flash of blinding light came from the castle, followed by a bellowing scream. 

“I told you it was too late,” Altin said. 

“No,” Victor said. He looked to the forge, where Yuri had just emerged, holding the exotic-looking greaves. Yuri ran his craft over to Victor, and Victor slid the greaves onto one hand, taking Yuuri’s hand in the other. “Love is never too late.” 

—

In the Sky Prince's chamber, on the balcony looking out at the globe, the Sun clutched an arm to his chest, hand emanating black smoke where his index and middle finger should have been.

"What is this," the Sun hissed. 

"Void and chaos," Victor murmured as he landed, flanked by Yuuri, Yuri, and Otabek.

"Nothing is supposed to hurt me!" the Sun roared, his golden hair looking aflame.

Victor stepped forward, greaves shining on his hand, fingers and palm protected by the iridescent metal. He reached towards the globe, carefully grasping the void metal, and was surprised to find, on touch, that it hissed, sizzled, and then white blossomed out from the connection point until it covered the entire shard. Veins of pastel hues marbled the metal. When Victor tugged on the shard, it came free of the globe. He blew gently across the storm, smoothing out the eye and tendering the winds. Then he moved to the next.

"What did you do?" the Sun asked. 

"The light crystals, the aurora, all the hues of rainbow light: they come from love, and like any other light, it can be mirrored into metal at the forge," Victor said. He was tired, and his castle was ruined, and his mother, who didn't love him, who hardly knew love at all, was still outside with her mare and the man who fell in love and tried to destroy the world for it. His citizens were trapped in human form on the surface, and even after he stopped the storms, the surface would feel their ramifications for months to come. 

"Look at the scars that it left," the Sun said, inspecting the lingering cuts in the globe, the dark masses of cloud and dust and water-logged storms. 

"It's okay," Victor said. "It'll be okay." He glanced back at Yuuri and reached out his hand, smiled as Yuuri stepped up to join him. "It doesn't have to be perfect."


	24. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas to all who celebrate <3 Thank you so much for going on this nano journey with me. I apologize as per always for the rush job on the wording/quality and undoubted repetition and plot holes. I hope it was enjoyable regardless <3
> 
> As a tiny little Christmas present, I'm adding a bonus chapter after this, to be posted either at the end of today or tomorrow, depending on my sugar consumption and subsequent crash. 
> 
> Thank you especially to **Pilari** , **Tuples** , **InsolentMinion** , and **EarthSorceress** for all your lovely support along the way. I mean it when I say it makes all the difference <3

Yuri rode on the back of a black pegasus, no bridle or saddle in sight, crushing sweet grass under hoof and sending sprays of whipped-cream scent into the air. From time to time Yuri bounced a lightning bolt between his hands or passed it to the stallion's wings or the silver horseshoes he wore. They criss-crossed the pasture, circling once around a black mare with silver streaks in her hair, and then jumped the pasture fence altogether and galloped across the cloud, past the scattered sleep sheep that Mickey was trying futilely to herd and between the silvery trunks and bold-colored leaves of the windwood forest. As they came to the forest's edge, the pegasus pulled to a walk, stepping beneath the koi-scale roof of the mirror forge. 

Mastersmith Altın worked inside: beating sun gold and moon silver into horseshoes, crafting elegant instruments with intricate inlay, and forming steel bowls that the Sky Prince could use to sing all the songs he pleased. Yuri hopped from his steed's back, and Otabek transformed into a human as they crossed the entryway.

"Is it almost ready?" Yuri asked. 

Altin reached beneath his workbench, pulling out an ornate windwood box and placing it before them. Yuri glanced to Otabek, and together they lifted the lid to reveal a circlet and crown: the circlet made of white metal with colorful veins, the crown of auroran steel.

"Do you think they’ll like it?" Altin asked. 

Yuri carefully closed the lid, then took the box under his arm. "They're fit for Kings." 

\--

The cherry blossoms around the lake were in full bloom, a faint snowfall of pink petals already speckling the lake’s surface. Though many of the branches and even trunks had broken, the trees themselves persisted. On the shore, pegasi of all different colors stood or grazed: black, dapple grey, and all the hues between. Each had a matching rider somewhere along the lake’s perimeter, sitting on blankets stretched out over the grass, eating onigiri or cumulus macarons. Emil, Seung Gil, and Minami sat with Yuuri's family, and a salivating Minako had a pile of papers beside her, constantly scratching away new notes as she stared at all the attendees—at least the ones she could see. 

Victor and Yuuri were supposed to be at the small shrine in the center of the lake’s island, but the pair were nowhere to be found. Laeo and Guang Hong stood there waiting for them, Laeo with the windwood box from Yuri, Guang Hong with two light crystals on a plush velvet pillow. Both crystals were slightly imperfect: a chip here, a spot of fog there, but that was part of the way they matched. 

The crystals remained clear, non-luminescent. They hadn’t been activated yet—that would have required Yuuri and Victor to actually be on time. 

“It’s just like the Sky Prince to be late,” Toph sighed. “Always has to make an impression.”

“Do you think any of the humans think he’s here? They just can’t see him?” Phichit wondered. He was resting on his stomach, feet waving in the air, playing with the crown of woven grasses he’d made for the occasion. 

“They’d be able to see Yuuri,” Toph mused. “And I think they know he wouldn’t show up alone.” Phichit just hummed at the assessment.

In actuality, Victor and Yuuri hadn’t even left the city yet. They were in Victor’s bedroom, and Victor was buck naked, his fingers dripping with sleep sheep butter. 

“Victor that’s just going to put you to sleep!” Yuuri said. 

“But I want to try, Yuuri,” Victor pleaded. “Don’t you want your parents to be able to see me?”

“They know what you look like, Vicchan,” Yuuri said. 

“Not like this!” Victor gestured to his moonglow hair, which at least was already styled and pinned and dripping in its usual, unnecessary amount of light crystals. He waggled his butt towards Yuuri again, the butter having already oozed and melted its way down Victor’s inner thighs. 

Yuuri sighed. “It’s going to feel _odd_ , Vicchan. You might not like it.” 

“ _Or_ ,” Victor corrected, “I might love it!”

Yuuri couldn’t deny that. His robe wasn’t the easiest thing to get into, or out of, and he knew enough about grease stains to want to be fully divested of the attire before he got anywhere near Victor or the butter he’d managed to get… in surprisingly irrelevant places on his body. 

“You know we’re going to be late,” Yuuri said as he began the slow process of denuding himself.

“I’m always late.”

— 

A half hour later, Victor and Yuuri alighted on the island: Victor in his white and gold with rainbow wings, and Yuuri in a many-colored robe, decorated and embroidered in the patterns of the aurora. His wings oscillated through colors, mesmerizing.  

“Finally,” Phichit sighed, standing up with the others to clap and cheer. 

The Katsukis were more reserved, but Minami bounced up and down beside them as if his lack of wings had just been replaced with human springiness. Yuuri did turn and give a little wave to his family, who all too eagerly returned the gesture. 

Otabek was the last to come out, having nearly fallen asleep waiting behind the shrine for the pair’s arrival. He held a scroll in his hands, dripping with glitter, and when he opened it the sparkling stuff blew onto Yuuri and Victor, making them twinkle all the more. This seemed to please Victor greatly, but it mortified Yuuri, suddenly able to see all the places on Victor’s face where they hadn’t quite gotten all the butter cleared away. 

Yuuri cleared his throat and brushed his thumb over a particularly glittery spot on Victor’s temple. 

Otabek arched his brow, trying to ascertain if they were done, and when they were, he read the rainbow ink. 

“Yuuri Katsuki, we welcome you to the city in the sky and confer upon you the title of—” Otabek paused. He scanned the rest of the scroll, glanced up at Victor, and when Victor beamed at him he shook his head in amusement and continued. “—the title of Aurora Prince.”

“Prince, hmm?” Yuuri teased Victor, holding his hand. 

“This title, however, is temporary, as we have all collected here for a far greater celebration,” Otabek said. “For ages, time passed in the sky without remark. Our sun was bright, our weather was warm, our world was perfect. But then we discovered humanity for the first time, and with it a brand new light.”

“Vicchan,” Yuuri murmured, squeezing his hand, and Victor returned the simple gesture.

“We’re still learning new things about love every day,” Otabek continued, and Victor gave Yuuri an egregiously obvious and inappropriate wink, “and we want to keep learning until the sky falls and the sun fades and time itself is only memory.” Yuuri flushed at that, finally getting choked up, and looked over at Victor, teary-eyed.

“It’s true,” Victor said softly.

Otabek turned, then, gesturing to Laeo, who took the auroran steel crown from the case. “To set a course for this journey, and to enable the leadership of the city to be split between equals, we hereby elevate the Sky Prince to the level of Sky King.” Otabek handed the scroll temporarily to Laeo in exchange for the crown and placed it atop Victor’s head. Then, he clasped the circlet, whose metal they had named Allandorder, and turned to Yuuri, “and the Aurora Prince we elevate to being our Color King.”

The title made Yuuri flush, but he bowed all the same to accept the circlet, giving it a small adjustment. 

“Do you like it?” Victor asked. 

“I love it,” Yuuri whispered. 

“Finally, a gift for our new kings,” Otabek said. Guang Hong brought forth the pad with the two crystals, and Yuuri and Victor took one each. “A reminder that love is beautiful exactly as it is: messy, mundane, and imperfect.” Otabek turned to Yuuri. “My King, if you would color the sky.” 

Victor gave another one of those terrible winks, but Yuuri just pinched his hand fondly and made an arc of his arm. The aurora bloomed high above in his wake, starting faint and then streaking the sky with a pinkish wave. 

“Nice color,” Laeo smiled. 

“I think so too,” Victor charmed. 

Victor and Yuuri each took a crystal, then turned to face each other. 

“I love you, Yuuri,” Victor murmured. 

“I love you, Victor,” Yuuri whispered in return. 

They both lifted their crystals towards the sky, and then, in unison, kissed. 

Usually crystals took on a single color, but when Victor and Yuuri kissed theirs, they captured the sky, and the aurora too. The colored thread that bound them oscillated through the spectrum, just like Yuuri’s wings, different hues catching on the foggy imperfections in the crystal, the chipped edges, and only adding to their beauty. Guang Hong helped fasten the crystals to Victor’s brooch, and Yuuri’s, and then the pair turned, side by side, joined by the light of love, to their worlds.


	25. BONUS: A Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A happy little bonus to thank y'all for coming on this ride <3 :)

“There must be _some_ way,” Victor insisted, his hand on Yuuri’s bare shoulder, anchoring him as Yuuri thrust away. 

“Have any of the citizens ever made a child?” Yuuri asked. It was hard to have this sort of conversation and maintain his body’s capacity to do what it was doing, but then, Victor’s body had heat and tightness enough to balance out even the most unappealing conversational topics. 

“Only the Mastersmith and the Moon Mare,” Victor pouted.

“A man and a woman… of sorts,” Yuuri said. 

“Couldn’t one of us be the woman?” Victor considered. Yuuri smirked, hiking Victor’s leg up over his shoulder. 

“You’d want to have your belly grow gigantic, and feel sick every day, and—”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be like that for a citizen,” Victor said. “Maybe it’s completely different. Maybe babies in the sky come from the lake, or bubble up through the clouds, or grow on the windwood trees.”

Yuuri narrowed his eyes at the idea, and didn’t realize he’d stopped his motions until Victor wiggled beneath him. “From trees…?”

“Like fruit,” Victor nodded affirmatively.

“Victor, we can’t talk about this right now,” Yuuri said, putting a hand over Victor’s lips as he picked up his pace. Victor batted his eyes innocently but then relaxed under Yuuri, starting to sink into his rhythm and moan against Yuuri’s hand. His hips rose up and Yuuri’s eyes rolled back, closing under the exquisite pleasure of that sensation. He could feel his wings growing, color expanding outward from his back, radiating with the intensity of his emotions. He finally slipped his hand off Victor’s mouth, but only to tangle it in his silver hair instead, bucking hard enough that he felt Victor’s wings pulse against the bed to try and ground himself. 

They didn’t speak again until after, when Yuuri lay over Victor, boneless. 

“Well, that was the hundredth time,” Yuuri said.

“Maybe we’ll have a baby this time,” Victor nodded. 

Yuuri just laughed, his body still shivering, lungs still calming down. “You know we’re a wonderful family even without a baby.”

“I know, but trying is fun, isn’t it?” Victor asked, giving another wiggle. “And I’m almost at 100 with you, too!” 

“Almost,” Yuuri smiled, kissing Victor’s cheek.

“Maybe when we both hit 100, it’ll make a baby,” Victor sighed dreamily. 

“Maybe,” Yuuri echoed.

—

Victor stood next to Yuuri in the windwood forest, deep enough that no one could see them. His fancy drawers were around his ankles, and he had one eye closed, trying to aim for the depression in the earth where they’d placed the windnut. 

Yuuri was even less hopeful that this would work, but he stood right next to Victor, stroking in time, aiming himself. His contribution was more of a pearly white than Victor’s impressively colorful spend, but they mixed nicely on top of the nut, and then Victor pushed some cloud over it and patted it in place. 

“Maybe it’ll grow a baby,” Victor said.

Yuuri looked at him and just smiled. “Maybe.”

—

“In the lake?!” Yuuri balked. 

“Well why not?” Victor blinked. 

“It’s going to be freezing!” 

Victor laughed: “Yuuri. We’re in the City. Come on. The water is always just right.” 

“But what if people see us? Most citizens don’t even—don’t even know what we’re doing.”

“Well, we’ll just call it a special type of dance,” Victor said after a thoughtful moment, and he pulled Yuuri to the shore. The pearlscale koi swam in lazy patterns, and Victor stripped down to nothing but a tiny white bikini bottom. Yuuri glanced around, then just stripped everything and followed Victor into the water, which was, as promised, warm and welcoming. 

He swam after Victor, who reached deeper water only to grab a shining lilypad that looked like a golden coin, apparently plenty buoyant enough to support Victor’s weight. Yuuri grabbed one as well, surprised to find he could easily sit—and probably stand—on them. Just to try, he pulled himself up onto the lily pad, letting his legs dangle in the water. 

“So… how do you want to do it?” Yuuri asked. 

Victor came up between his legs, abandoning his lilypad in favor of being closer to the Color King. Victor had only recently learned that kisses didn’t have to be restricted to lips or hands, and he took advantage of that knowledge as Yuuri squirmed at the ticklish feeling on his abdomen. Victor looked up at him. “Like the tree—but we touch each other this time.” 

Yuuri just shook his head. “Well I can’t reach you down there.”

Victor pulled his lily pad back over, sitting on it facing Yuuri, and as he kissed his Color King their hands played across and over each other, until they had both added shimmery ribbons to the lake. 

“Maybe that will work,” Victor beamed.

Yuuri kissed his smile: “Maybe.”

—

Laeo and Guang Hong brought the crystal to the castle on a cloudy day, the sun occasionally peaking through the cracks in the gray fluff. Yuuri insisted that the castle doors stay open to all, and now it wasn’t uncommon to have the castle bustling: Emil working in the kitchen, Toph coming to the library to read, and Laeo and Guang Hong still fixing up the last of the chandeliers that were destroyed in the incident. 

They hefted the crystal together all the way up to the prince’s chambers, knocking on the door. 

“Your Majesties!” Laeo called. 

“Laeo, do you need Victor?” Yuuri asked when he opened the door. “He’s working on a new decathalot.” 

“Err… we wanted you both to see something,” Laeo said, nodding to the cloth covered mass they were holding.

Yuuri welcomed them inside, and Victor showed up not long after, half of his face covered in sparkling green powder. “Guang Hong! Laeo!” 

“Your majesty!” Guang Hong chirped. “We found something in the clouds.”

“Well, it’s more what we didn’t find in the clouds,” Laeo said. “It’s… never happened before.”

“Like the new fish in the lake?” Victor asked. 

“No…”

“Or the new type of tree in the forest?” 

“No.”

Ever since Victor and Yuuri’s… attempts… new creatures had been appearing in the city. The lake now had schools of small fish that flashed different colors as they swam one way or the next: sometimes silver, sometimes purple, sometimes yellow. In the forest, normally populated by the straight and tall windwood, there now grew a maple-like tree. It forked and branched, leaves slowly moving through the rainbow over the course of the year. Yuuri had an idea of where the new life had come from, but he kept it mostly to himself. Talking to Victor’s steed didn’t count. 

“Well. Let’s see then!” Victor said, clapping his hands together.

Laeo pulled off the magenta cloth, revealing the largest crystal Victor had ever seen. It was bigger than his head, if barely, and looked like it weighed enough to fall straight through the clouds. 

“It’s enormous!” Victor balked. 

“Yes, but that’s… not the only weird thing,” Laeo pointed out. “Don’t you see?”

Victor stared intently at it, circling the crystal, but it was Yuuri who finally piped up: “There’s only one.”

“Exactly,” Laeo said. “We’ve been searching for weeks, and we’ve never found a pair for it. We ALWAYS find pairs for crystals. Almost always the same day, but sometimes it takes up to a week. But we’ve never, ever had one that just didn’t have a pair. We searched the entire cloud cluster!” 

With a thoughtful finger pressed to his lips, Victor studied the crystal. “What do you think it means?”

“… We don’t know,” Laeo admitted. “We thought you might.” 

Yuuri looked at the shape and size of the crystal, the chunkiness of it, the tapered bottom. “Victor. Will you try something with me?” Yuuri asked. “I want to try to activate it. We both kiss it at the same time.”

“That’s not how they work,” Leo blinked in confusion. 

“It’s not how the paired ones work,” Yuuri said. …But all of Victor’s enthusiasm had given him an idea. Victor, of course, was willing to do anything that Yuuri asked, especially if it involved kissing. They gazed at each other, then spread their wings, creating a little alcove for just the two of them around the crystal. 

Their lips met the stone at the same time, feeling strangely warm against their mouths. As they pulled back they saw flecks and sparks within the crystal, traveling from the points of the kiss to the crystal’s center, where they grew and blossomed into an apple-sized orb of light with something darker—solid—within. It pulsed, pulsed, and then a small glow started up, beating like a heart. 

“What is it?” Victor whispered, and Yuuri’s face split into the biggest grin. 

“I think it’s our baby.”


End file.
